Obama’s plans have gone sour

Ed Dornlas, Las Vegas

Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

After his election in 2008, President Barack Obama took on the role of head economic chef and, with his assistant cooks in the House and Senate, set about cooking up a delicious economic casserole for our country. They added their favorite ingredients from old recipes from the 1930s.

They took a nice base of borrowed and taxed money and to that they added a handful of health care regulation (even though most of the guests did not seem to care for it). Then they added a scoop of financial regulation, a kind of a mystery ingredient that was not very popular in past dishes. And then, to make it even more tasty, they added environmental regulations that they knew at least some of the guests would enjoy.

Well, they put it all into the oven to bake and here three years later — instead of the pleasant fragrance of prosperity — it has begun to smell, well, bad. The foul odor of high unemployment is mingled with the stink of depressingly slow growth, and just a sour hint of inflation.

Inexperienced cooks might try to fix it up; maybe adding a little tax relief or a touch of infrastructure spending. But in my experience, if the guests can’t get it past their noses, you might as well toss it out and let someone else cook.