Jimmy Carter's Legislative Blunders

On the other side of the coin is Jimmy Carter. Carter is the epitome of Presidency gone wrong especially in his first hundred days in office. There were two keys pieces of legislation on the table during Carter's First Hundred Days.

First was Carter's Stimulus Plan planned to be around the sum of $23-30 billion. The economy Carter inherited was called a Stagflation economy. Stagflation means that the economy has a high inflation rate with high unemployment.

 The key portion to his plan to revitalize the economy was to give all Americans a fifty dollar tax rebate but he completely abandoned this portion once the economy began to recover a little bit.
Even with this portion abandoned, the bill still attempted to stimulated the economy with more focus on the high inflation rates. But, a stimulus prints and adds more money to the economy causing money to lose purchasing power and thereby increasing inflation.


Jimmy Carter caused more problems for the economy with his stimulus and sent inflation through the roof.




One Ranking House Democrat said that Carter had not realized that “[a lot] of members put [their] necks on the line” for his stimulus rebate plan and that he was “less than fair” to the supporters of the bill who “worked hard to get it passed…against [their] better judgment (Burke 34). Carter shows why he was not an effective leader/President here. With Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he was able to get bipartisan praise and support. But, Jimmy Carter could not even control his own party when attempting to pass his legislation.


An effective leader is a person's who stands for their convictions and is not wish-washy about his/her goals. Jimmy Carter could not even communicate his own goals to his own party and basically left them to fend for themselves against all opposition.


Source:
Burke, John P. "Jimmy Carter: Transition and Early Presidency." Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: Seventy-six Case Studies in Presidential Leadership. By David M. Abshire and Center for the Study of the Presidency. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. 32-36. Print.