Dear Mr. President-Elect, Please Be Bolder - Millennial Money with Cliff Mason

BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

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Jan.05

4:37 PM ET

Monday, 5 Jan 2009

Dear Mr. President-Elect, Please Be Bolder

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Barack Obama
AP
Barack Obama
Memo to Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress: you won the election.

We need massive government invention to get out of the economic mess we're in. We don't want the next ten years to be called America's lost decade. That's why the American people, in their infinite wisdom, sent a huge Democratic majority to congress and gave Obama the White House.

But now we're hearing that Obama wants to give $310 billion of his $775 billion stimulus plan over to tax cuts. He's said he wants to get 80 votes in the Senate for the stimulus bill. And the Democratic Congress seems to be fretting excessively about being accused of wasteful spending. What the heck?

Look, to paraphrase the immortal words of George W. Bush four years ago, "We had an accountability moment, and it's called the 2008 elections." I never thought I'd be saying this, but I wish Obama would behave a little more like his soon—to—be—predecessor. No matter what, Democrats will always be accused of wasteful tax and spend liberalism. So it's absurd that, at the moment when we actually need wasteful tax and spend liberalism, they're shying away from it.

What happened to audacity? Most economists agree that we need about a trillion dollars worth of stimulus. Obama and the congressional Democrats should stop worrying about political appearances right now and start worrying about results. Voters won't care whether the stimulus bill was wasteful and contained too much spending in the 2010 mid-terms or the 2012 presidential election as long as it works. If it doesn't work, and the economy gets worse or just doesn't recovery years, then there won't be anything the Democrats can do anyway. So they might as well stop pussyfooting around and give us something more than a watered down stimulus package.

More from CNBC's John Harwood's Exclusive Interview With President-elect Obama

This is especially important for those of us in our twenties. I don't want to spend the next decade living in a country with a half-dead economy, where jobs and money are really hard to come by. A repeat of the great depression seems unlikely, but we might end up reliving Japan's lost decade if Obama and the Democrats don't get a little bolder. What good is it to us if the economic climate doesn't improve until we're in our mid-thirties? That's a real possibility if the stimulus package doesn't work.

Mr. Obama, this decade belongs to the millennial generation. Please don't lose it out of a misplaced desire for bipartisan consensus.