Partisan Politics Won’t Stimulate the Economy

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and his Democrats continue to stall on passage of any meaningful economic stimulus package (“Bush Renews Call for Tax Cuts,” Dec. 2). Daschle has been promising since the beginning of October to pass a viable economic stimulus package but, as usual, it is all talk. The Democrats continue to push for a spend-and-more-spend stimulus with a lot of pork in it. By the time Daschle and his merry band of Democrats complete any useful economic stimulus package it could be next year. As usual, Daschle and the Democrats can always talk the political talk but cannot walk the walk to truly address the economic needs of the American economy and its citizens.

Bernard Merkle

Westlake Village

Re “Forget Handouts; Spur Production,” Commentary, Nov. 30: Price Fishback and Shawn Kantor must have gleaned their knowledge of the results of FDR’s New Deal from books or hearsay. I lived during that dark period during my late teens and early 20s. I clearly recall that despite the alphabetic plans, the Great Depression experienced little or no surcease until, in 1939, Germany invaded Poland and England finally realized that Hitler had to be stopped. Then we began what became an enormous production effort--we called it Lend-Lease--to supply Great Britain with desperately needed logistics to stem the Nazi tide. Only then did the Great Depression finally come to an end.

Louis Neumark

Reseda

Re “Economy’s Glass Is Always Half Empty,” Commentary, Nov. 30: The preeminent Republican apologist George Will can massage the economic statistics all he wants, none of which changes the fact that we are in the second recession (not to mention war) in as many Bush administrations. Or that the longest peacetime economic expansion in our history began when the first Bush administration ended, and ended when the second Bush administration began.

George W. Serbia

Irvine