Regime Flip-Flops on Double-Dip

RUSH: Now, here’s this AP story: ‘White House Warns Tax Defeat Could Trigger New Recession — … Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, told reporters that if the overall tax package isn’t passed soon, it will ‘materially increase the risk the economy would stall out and we would have a double-dip’ recession. That put the White House in the unusual position of warning its own party’s lawmakers they could be to blame for calamitous consequences if they go against the president. … Summers’ remarks contrasted with Obama’s comments at a news conference Tuesday.’ Obama said, ‘We don’t have the danger of a double-dip recession.’ So Obama Tuesday, ‘There’s no worry here of a double-dip recession.’ Summers, the next day, ‘If we don’t pass this thing soon, we risk a double-dip recession.’ Today Obama warns of a double-dip recession, where on Tuesday he said there was no chance of one. So somebody’s pulling and dragging Obama along here, too, and they’re probably having to explain to him, ‘Hey, stick with us on this. You win either way, but we gotta do it this way.’ Otherwise he woulda gotten his ego in the way, ‘I’m not gonna let Larry Summers manipulate me, idiot, Harvard fired him, I graduated.’ But they’ve talked him into it somehow.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tuesday afternoon in Washington, this is Obama.

OBAMA: When the Recovery Act passed, we were looking at a potential Great Depression and we might have seen unemployment go up to 15%, 20%, we don’t know. In combination with the work we did in stabilizing the financial system, the work that the Federal Reserve did, that’s behind us now. We don’t have the danger of a double-dip recession.

RUSH: Tuesday, folks, Tuesday. Two days ago at the White House our president, Imam Obama, says we don’t have a danger of a double-dip recession because we passed the stimulus. And in the process — I didn’t know this — we staved off 15 to 20% unemployment. But two days ago, ‘We don’t have the danger of a double-dip recession.’ ‘Mr. Limbaugh, we heard you. Why you keep repeating it?’ ‘Cause I want to make sure everybody understands this. Just two days ago Obama said we don’t have the danger of a double-dip recession. Today, the headline is the exact opposite: ‘White House Warns Tax Defeat Could Trigger New Recession.’ And that’s actually from last night. So Tuesday, no way, no double-dip recession. Yesterday, ‘White House Warns Tax Defeat Could Trigger New Recession.’ I’m just telling you this because the original theory that I have here, this is all to set up Obama as a winner in 2012 no matter what happens with the economy.

Now, here’s Larry Summers. This morning on Squawk on the Street on CNBC, Erin Burnett — the Street Sweetie — they still call her that? She’s talking to Summers and she says, ‘You’ve been saying it’s crucial to get this deal passed or it would increase the risk of a double-dip recession. Do you think this deal’s really done or could this end up sort of like TARP did where it was, quote, unquote, done then blew up and sent the market into disarray?’

SUMMERS: I think the right thing is gonna happen here, you know, if you add it up, the payroll tax holiday, the extension of unemployment insurance, the expensing of business investment, the continuation of the Bush middle-class tax cuts, this is a program that really is gonna give the economy a substantial shot in the arm at a time when that’s what we need. There’s obviously been uncertainty about the economy, particularly with what happens in Europe, and it’s the right time to reduce uncertainty and give the economy a major shot in the arm, and that’s what this bill will do. It’s an important compromise, and I expect we’ll see it in law before Christmas.

RUSH: It’s amazing what an election will do. These guys, they wouldn’t admit this up ’til November 2nd. Do you think anybody in this regime woulda said anything like this? In the first place they wouldn’t talk about tax cuts, tax holidays on payroll taxes, business expensing, no. They weren’t gonna do any of that. That was all for the rich, that was Reaganism, that was supply-side, that’s what got us in the problem, that’s what created the problem. Now, we could logically say if you think this now, why didn’t you think it six months ago? Why didn’t you think this when you assumed office? Why didn’t you put this kind of thinking into practice? Why didn’t you implement policy based on this kind of thinking? If you’d done that we wouldn’t be where we are now. Okay, so on Tuesday Obama says there won’t be double-dip recession. Yesterday, Summers says there will be. Today Obama says there will be, after saying there won’t be on Tuesday. Austan Goolsbee, also known as Ichabod Crane, this morning on the Fox News Channel, America’s Newsroom during a discussion of the tax rate compromise, Bill Hemmer said, ‘I don’t understand the sudden conversion at the White House on this double-dip recession business. What explains that, [Ichabod]?’

GOOLSBEE: The sudden conversion, look, there hadn’t been any conversion. The president doesn’t think extending high income tax cuts will work, but I think the thing that changed is that the president was able to negotiate substantial amounts to go to the kind of priorities that he does think will work, the middle income tax cuts, the Obama tax cuts for the middle-class, not just the Bush ones, the money for a payroll tax to go to workers, money for investment incentives for companies to build factories here as well as education credits and that kind of thing. And so offered with a deal like that I think everybody’s gotta be for it because ultimately I think that’s what’s best for the economy.

RUSH: There aren’t any tax cuts in this. There aren’t any stimulative tax cuts in this. So the current tax rates are a major shot in the arm, but in two years they won’t be? And they should never have been passed ten years ago anyway? They should have never been passed, now for two years they’re gonna be a great stimulus, and then after that they stop being a stimulus. And if we don’t do it it’s gonna be a double-dip recession, whereas Tuesday it wasn’t gonna be. It was impossible to have a double-dip recession. The next day, we better do this, Obama says, we have a double-dip recession. So the current tax rates are a huge shot in the arm, which they’re not. They’re not stimulative. In two years they won’t be, but they shoulda never been passed ten years ago in the first place. You follow? We shoulda never done ’em, they’re gonna be great the next two years, and then we’re gonna get rid of ’em. They shoulda never been done in the first place.