Today’s depressing GDP numbers surely will put more pressure on politicians to “do something.” Unfortunately, the Democrats who promised “change” decided that the best response to the downturn is to give us more spending, debt, and meddling–the very policies that helped put the economy in the tank in the first place. As I explain in this short video, why should we believe that more spending on education, housing, transportation, and health care will boost growth when Bush already increased spending for those programs by record amounts?

The good news is that the economy eventually will recover, even if Democrats further increase the burden of government. It takes a lot of very bad policy over an extended period of time to prolong a downturn. That is what happened under Hoover and Roosevelt, of course, so we need to keep our fingers crossed that the White House will curtail the worst impulses of House and Senate Democrats.