Hoover's Law

Enjoy it while you can. Soon enough the equivalent to Godwin's Law will be enacted, & references to Republicans as Hoover-ish will be a no-no.

Now, Mr. McConnell is echoing Mr. Hoover again. Recently, he proposed that federal aid to states in the planned Obama recovery package be provided as loans rather than outright grants.

Flashback to 1932: Having resisted all attempts to provide effective federal relief, Mr. Hoover was finally persuaded by Congressional progressives to sign a bill allocating $300 million to the states for unemployment relief. There was just one hook: The money would be in the form of loans, not outright grants.

Requiring the money to be paid back softened Mr. Hoover’s antipathy to federal relief spending. But the loans were of limited value because states, already in terrible budget shape, couldn’t make use of them.

That was yesterday. Today:

[McConnell's] not the only one. Last week, House minority leader John Boehner called for tax cuts to fight the recession and downplayed the need for direct government spending, declaring “America cannot buy its way to prosperity with more and more government spending.”

Mr. Hoover was equally off point, if more eloquent, in 1932 when he stubbornly resisted federal aid for the victims of the Great Depression saying, “We cannot squander ourselves into prosperity.”

"Oooh, not fair, you can't connect Hoover w/ the current Republicans! Waaah!"