Over the weekend, liberal columnist Frank Rich wrote a long piece for New York Magazine, calling on President Obama to implement more policies that could make the economy worse: more taxes and ever more government spending. Unfortunately, Rich may not have to worry, since Democrats seem determined to push more of these failed policies on the country.

Rich wrote that Obama “hit a welcome note last week when he urged some higher corporate taxes for hedge funds and the like.” And in his press conference last week, Obama said, “You can’t reduce the deficit to the levels that it needs to be reduced without having some revenues in the mix.” Indeed, Democrats are fixated on tax increases. Vice President Joe Biden recently referred to “the pieces most important to us Democrats, revenue” and Talking Points Memo wrote that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) “made clear that the talks frayed over Democrats’ insistence that tax increases of some sort be part of the final deal.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are also back calling for more stimulus spending, despite the nearly $1 trillion spent on the original failed stimulus package. In his piece, Rich lamented the “the too-small stimulus” and pined for “[a] once-hoped-for WPA-style public-works program.”  Democrats have been calling for new spending for weeks now. In fact, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said that “[t]here’s very broad support” among Senate Democrats “for more infrastructure spending,” according to The Hill.

As Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) said in the Weekly Republican Address this weekend, “The President and Democrats in Congress must recognize that their game plan is not working. It’s time to acknowledge that more government and higher taxes is not the answer to our problem.”

Democrats should be offering solutions that will create jobs and reduce the debt, not pushing policies that would do just the opposite and in fact only make our economic and fiscal problems worse.

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