A Great Puzzle

One of the most puzzling things about Washington is that nobody seems to ever learn anything from real life.

Bush handed out rebates to everyone with the idea everyone would rush out and spend the money to boost the economy. Instead, 3/4 of the checks went into savings or to pay down debts.

Then Obama handed out checks to everybody to boost the economy and exactly the same thing happened.

Obama's first attempt to help small businesses (the source of most new jobs) was to give them a tax credit for hiring new people. No small business ever hired a new employee to get a tax break. (In addition, to get the tax break, the employer had to prove that the new hire had been unemployed for more than six months, e.g., more paper work, the single thing most small businesses hate the most.)

Now he wants to help small businesses by helping them get credit. Every survey of small businesses says their No. 1 problem is not lack of credit, it is lack of customers. Declining retail sales across the country demonstrate that problem.

It increasingly looks as if Washington people have decided that ordinary Americans are too stupid to know what is in their own best interest.