American Made by Dan DiMicco

Author:Dan DiMicco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

Seven

More Myths That Distract Us

And What to Do about Them

The vast majority of Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike—think the federal government spends too much money. Anyone can see that Congress spends more money than the treasury takes in. As of October 2014, the United States had a $483 billion budget deficit1 and more than $17.9 trillion in national debt.2 A poll taken just before the 2010 midterm elections by the Tarrance Group and Hart Research found that more than two-thirds of likely voters believe excessive government spending hurts the country and their personal finances.3

It’s a problem. Not the greatest problem we face, but people worry. I think what most people don’t understand is that government policy hurts growth and makes the jobs crisis worse not by spending too much money, but by spending on the wrong things in the wrong way. Focusing on “how much” instead of “how” and “where” is a mistake.

Think back to the stimulus debate in 2009. I think most Americans understand that the nearly $1 trillion plan that Congress and President Obama passed didn’t work as promised. Adjusted for inflation, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was bigger than the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, which was supposed to help end the Great Depression. It was bigger than the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Europe and contain Soviet communism after World War II. All told, the federal government spent about five times as much on the 2009 stimulus as we spent to put Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969.4

Does anyone really think the stimulus was money well spent? No way. Not even close. But, remember, I supported the stimulus plan. I hated to ask the government to do anything for us. But we had no choice. The crisis was unprecedented. Something had to be done, and the government was in the ideal position to do it. When the credit crisis hit, it was immediate—like dominoes falling, one after the other. No one had ever seen anything like it. The private sector was in a tailspin. Customers simply vanished, because they couldn’t get the financing they needed. With no credit, construction just stopped. It was like somebody suddenly turned off a water spigot.

The crisis cut our business in half, and our people were really hurting. Nucor didn’t lay anybody off, but everyone in the company took a pay cut. During the very worst days of the crisis, our teammates were making 50 percent of their usual pay.

I thought a well-designed stimulus might have done a lot of good under the circumstances. That’s why I talked up the “Buy American” language in the law, to make sure the stimulus money stayed in the United States. I’m not a union guy, but that time I was on the same side as Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO. It was absolutely the right thing to do. I said then, and I still say, that if we wanted to stimulate our economy, we needed to spend our tax dollars on U.

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