Congress's influence on the economy

Today I am going to talk about the influence Congress has or can have on our country's economy.

You may remember back in your civics class you were taught that:
The President proposes; Congress disposses.

Just what does that mean. It means the President send proposals to congress on what he would like the congress to do about certain issues and problems. That is all they are, proposals. The President's budget is an example of a proposal. You've heard people say with contempt, "the President cut the budget", meaning he cut spending in a certain program. The President does not have that perogative, to cut spending. The Presdent's spending and taxation proposals are sent to the House of Representatives where they are considered and debated in various committees. What finally comes out of those committees and sent to the floor of the house seldoms reflects what the President proposed. The one period of esception to this was the first six months after Lydon Johnson was sworn in as President after President Kennedy was assassinated. Kennedy had spent his entire three years in office trying to get a raft of social programs passed. These were not from his ideas but were Harry Truman's. Truman never made any attempt to get them passed as he knew they would go no where. Kennedy found that out when each of his social programs were rejected by a congress controlled by his own party. As a tribute to Kennedy, Johnson rushed one proposal after another of these social programs to congress. At the time, Congress was overwhelmingly controlled by the Democrats. Under pressure from Johnson, each of these proposals were rushed through Congress so fast Republicans complained they were not even given an opportunity to read them before they were expected to vote on them.

Most, if not all, of these proposals (programs) were written in such a way they would not go into affect, and their vast cost would not show up in Presidents budgets until several years after they were signed into law. When the financial affects did start showing up in huge amounts, a Republican was in the White House. There was a sudden huge increase in Federal spending and he was blamed by the Democrats and the liberal news media for those huge increases, even though thinking people were well aware they were caused by all those expensive social programs rushed through by congress and President Johnson.

Our economy was doing great up until a year and a half ago. Despite the huge tax cuts pushed through by President Bush, taxes collected by the IRS had increased to their largest amount by the end of the 2006.
Then the democrats regained control of both houses when congress was sworn in in January 2007. Within six months of their taking control, our economy started going down hill. Were they to blame.
Consider my statement of yesterday to the affect that what happens to our economy depends a great deal on consumer confidence. When consumers lose their confidence in the economy, they slow way down on their spending and that, of course, causes the economy to go down hill. Starting a year a half ago, did consumer confidence go down because the consumer had no confidence in the democratically controlled congress? I don't know. This possiblily has never been raised by any editorialist or politician that I know of. But control of congress was the one major change in our national picture which took place in the last 1 1/2 years, a time corresponding to our economy going down hill.

Congress's control over the economy has as much to do with inactivity as with being active. When a problem is developing in our economy and congress takes no action and does nothing about it, they must accept the blame for what develops because of their inaction. Problems with the housing and the banking industry had been developing over the past two years but the democratically controlled congress ignored these pending problems.
The tax cuts pushed through by President Bush are due to expire in the near future but congress has failed to do anything about this. In fact, democratic leaders have mostly talked about increasing taxes. This has had to have had an affect on consumer confidence.

Tomorrow I will enlarge on what are within the perogatives of a President in regards to our nation's economy. Either tomorrow or the following day, I will also talk about the affects greatly increasing taxes on the so call rich has on the economy.