This Week George Stephanopolous

“This Week”

2/8/09

This weeks (2/8/09) edition of “This Week” had some very interesting perspectives on

the Stimulus package and proposal. The first guest on the show was Lawrence Summers.

He is the Director of the National Economic Council, and is pushing for the passing of

Obama’s Bill. A diagram of statistics on both the House and Senate Budgets is posted

for the public view, which shows the projected spending. Clearly, the House budget

was more “generous” with the billions proposed. Summers feels that we NEED to

have support in the stimulus for education, without having “wasteful programs” in this

presidency. He states firmly that this isn’t about anything but creating the best possible

bill for the country, as 600,000 jobs were lost in one month. That is about the number

of jobs in Maine as an entire state. During his interview, a clip from Senator Mitch

McConnell (Minority Leader) is shown in which he claims the New Deal didn’t work,

and we’re (Obama) repeating mistakes of the past all over again. Later in the show

Lawrence Summers is asked about our current state of depression, and states that times

are worse than after the Second World War. He is poked and prodded by Stephanopoulos

about the plan, but Summers holds strong and says he will not “preview” the bill for

the public just yet. This is the beginning of a process of repairing the economy. Credit

markets are not working correctly, and he believes a stimulus package putting more

money into the system will be effective.

The next interview conducted was with a gentleman named Michael Steele. He’s the

Chairman of the Republic National Committee. Right from the get go, Stephanopoulos

shares Lawrence Summers view from earlier, and so begins the controversy. He begins

by saying that Bush “inherited” a recession when inaugurated into office. This goes on

about how Bush’s spending was defiantly wrong, and spend entirely too much, but on...