Market growth slow to change

Stimulus may not be enough

CAREY O’NEIL

Issue date: 2/5/09

Students entering the job market during the next few years won’t have a market to enter if history is any indication, an economics professor said Wednesday.

Even with a stimulus package being rushed out of Washington, D.C., professor Bill Lastrapes doesn’t believe the outlook is good for job searchers.

Employment is typically the slowest thing to turn around in a bad economy, Lastrapes said in a phone interview Wednesday.

“On average, we’re talking about four years of employment decline. Since we’ve been in the employment decline for a little over a year, then we have another three or so years to go, and this does seem to be a recession that’s worse than average,” he said.

Lastrapes said he worries the stimulus package, which passed through the House last week, may not provide the type of stimulus Americans need.

“One thing about a stimulus package is it has to stimulate spending quickly to try and generate improvements in employment. It’s not clear that a lot of spending is going to help right away,” he said.

One of the major problems Lastrapes said he sees with the package is a lack of value in the job-creating projects proposed.

“The common example is, if the government simply wants to create jobs, you hire a bunch of people to dig a hole, then you hire a bunch of people to fill it back in again,” Lastrapes said. “The stimulus is supposed to be spending on valued things.”

The professor did see some positive points in the bill, saying there is a good chance it will improve people’s confidence in the economy.

“Everybody’s scared right now. I think everybody wants to see something done,” he said. He added people don’t want to spend money when they’re afraid, and that the government should take action to alleviate those fears.

But the stimulus may have benefits for Georgia public schools, said John Millsaps, spokesperson for the Board of Regents, in a phone interview Wednesday.

Though it has not been determined how the money will be allocated, he said the Board was proposing projects that would immediately create jobs, specifically ones related to infrastructure.

Napp Nazworth, lecturer in the Department of Political Science, said it is difficult to predict if the package will be successful.

“It’s hard to know if this stuff is going to work when you’ve never tried before,” Nazworth said in a phone interview Wednesday. He noted that no stimulus package of this scale has ever been proposed to Congress before.

Nazworth described the package, saying, “You’ll see lots of different goals in the bill - create jobs, prevent job loss, help states and some goals tied to more of an ideological agenda.”

Nazworth elaborated, saying the White House is looking to use the current economic crisis to create several changes while many Republicans want to focus only on issues such as job creation.

Greg Wilson, a sophomore from Marietta and chairman of the College Republicans, said he is against the stimulus package.

“It includes lots of pork barrel projects,” he said. “For example, they’re giving $1 billion to subsidize Amtrak, which hasn’t shown a profit in years.”

Wilson said he worries most about his future.

“We can’t afford this debt right now,” he said. “We’re going to be the ones who end up paying for it.”

College Republicans passed out “bailout bucks” at the Tate Plaza on Tuesday to explain their opposition to the bill.

Louis Elrod, a junior from Mount Airy and president of the Young Democrats, shares similar concerns.

“It’s a little bit scary to think that we already have a multi-trillion dollar deficit.”

Nevertheless, Elrod said a deficit was better than being required to keep a balanced budget.

“We’d have a balanced budget, but there would still be people out there suffering,” he said. “Yes, we have a deficit, so we need to look at how to keep our economy on track to pay it back.”

Elrod said although the job market outlook for the next few years is bleak, the stimulus package is exactly what Americans need.

“The healing process takes awhile, but we do think that this money is going to jump start the economy, that people are going to start investing back in their country and in their economy.”

The most important projects are those related to transportation, helping people to get to their jobs, and those related to renewable energy, he said.

“With ‘green collar’ jobs, I think we can kill two birds with one stone, helping fix our energy problems and putting people to work in a new industry that will actually benefit us 50 years down the road.”

Still, one of the major criticisms opponents have of the bill is the massive amounts of spending.

Nazworth said it comes down to one question: “Do we want to pay now or pay later?”

Freedom Works

Students at The University of Georgia fight the Obama debt plan

Students join stimulus debate

UGA Republicans’ ‘bailout bucks’ criticize potential cost to future generations

By BLAKE AUED

Issue Date: 02/04/09

Young Republicans passed out “bailout bucks” to University of Georgia students Tuesday to remind them that, when it comes to a 12-figure economic stimulus package, Congress isn’t playing with Monopoly money.

Greg Wilson, chairman of the UGA College Republicans, said he wanted to remind his fellow teenagers and 20-somethings that it may take decades to pay off the nearly $1 trillion Democrats want to spend to shore up the worst economy since the 1930s.

“The biggest concern for college students is we’re going to be paying for this for the rest of our lives,” Wilson said.

A small group of College Republicans handed out fake trillion-dollar bills to passers-by outside the Tate Student Center. They also gathered about 120 signatures on an anti-stimulus petition, which will be sent to U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, both R-Ga., Wilson said.

The Senate is debating an $885 billion version of the package. The House of Representatives passed an $819 billion version last week with no Republican votes.

Many students who passed by Tuesday said they had only a vague notion of the size of the stimulus package or what’s in it - a mix of tax cuts and spending intended to spur the economy out of its recession.

College Republicans told students the package includes projects they consider wasteful, including $600 million to buy cars for the government and $1 billion for Amtrak, the unprofitable federal railroad.

“We have to do something for the economy, but all this spending isn’t going to help us,” Wilson said. “Lower taxes so people have more money to take home.”

Some students, though, weren’t buying the Republican line.

“I feel like, by the time it goes on the president’s desk, it’ll be washed clean of (pork),” said Thomas Carroll, who identified himself as a Democrat. “We have to do something, and the sooner the better.”

The UGA College Republicans chapter, one of the largest in the country, was not as active as usual in 2008. But Wilson said he wants to plan more public events to draw new members and get the GOP message out.

“Today, we’re reaching more people than we do in a meeting,” he said.

GOP leader to speak about Republican Party’s future

CAREY O’NEIL

Issue date: 1/14/09

A strong, widely accessible message is key for the future of the Republican Party, a Republican National Committee member from Georgia said Tuesday.

“What we need to do first of all is define the message of the RNC, because some of the elected officials that we’ve sent to D.C. have not stayed on message,” said Linda Herren, who will speak at the College Republicans meeting tonight.

Herren is one of 168 Republicans on the committee, which will decide at the end of this month the next national Republican Party chairman.

“We need to get our message out, especially to the young people and the minorities, that we are the party of fiscal responsibility and so forth,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “Some people have said our brand has become tainted and people don’t know what we stand for.”

Greg Wilson, a sophomore from Marietta and chairman of the College Republicans, said explaining values is important.

“I think the role is really to rebuild the party,” Wilson said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“The values we have are just fine,it’s just explaining those values to people,” he said.

Herren said she saw several areas where the Republican Party needs to improve.

“There were many factors that contributed to our losses, not only in the White House, but across the country. One of those factors was the technology issues. The RNC just didn’t utilize what it had.”

“We also need to reach out to youth,” Wilson said. “If the Republican Party doesn’t start reaching out to college kids, there will be a gap i

n conservatives in my generation.”

Matt Ralston, a freshman and public relations director for the College Republicans, said this election is critical because it will help define the Republican Party over the next several years.

“I think the [Republican Party's] role nationally is to respectfully object to the President-elect. We support President-elect Obama, but obviously we have different ideas,” Ralston said in a phone interview Tuesday. “You may not like what President Obama is trying to push through Congress, so here’s an alternative.”

The meeting is tonight at 7 in room 214 of the Miller Learning Center.