Mark Sanford speaks

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) on the stimulus:

Historically, simply throwing government money at a struggling economy hasn’t created growth. It certainly didn’t in Japan during the 1990s, when the Japanese government initiated no fewer than 10 stimulus packages over eight years. Instead of fortifying the economy, government intervention led to what is often referred to as “the lost decade,” a time when Japan’s unemployment rate more than doubled.

Supporters of the current plan like to point to the New Deal as a model, declaring that FDR’s massive government expenditures dragged this country out of the Great Depression. But the data points just don’t back that up. The Depression kicked off with the stock market crash of 1929. Ten years and billions of taxpayer dollars later, unemployment was stuck at 20 percent.

You don’t have to believe me. Believe Henry Morganthau, President Roosevelt’s own treasury secretary, who said the following: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started.... And an enormous debt to boot!”

Read the whole thing. From early indications it's going to take eight years of this guy in the White House to undo four years of Obama and the Democratic Congress.