I have scratched my head more than once wondering why apparently cowed and spineless Democrats seem to totally and completely inept at expressing common sense and reality to common sense people about debt limit and job growth. Well, economists are wondering also.
Read the article at NYT with quotations by economists and former officials ncluding those of Democratic administrations and several Republican administrations almost all believing the GOP TEA "Party" economic plan with no tax increases and no spending for job growth is nearly total nonsense.
G.O.P. on Defensive as Analysts Question Party's Fiscal Policy
A couple examples from that site prefaced with this:
But even before that, macroeconomists and private sector forecasters were warning that the direction in which the new House Republican majority had pushed the White House and Congress this year — for immediate spending cuts, no further stimulus measures and no tax increases, ever — was wrong for addressing the nation’s two main ills, a weak economy now and projections of unsustainably high federal debt in coming years.
“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.
As for the longer term, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America, wrote this week that “Given the scale of the debt problem, a credible plan requires both revenue enhancement measures and entitlement reform. Washington’s recent debt deal did not include either.”
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Republicans are resistant. And Democrats are too cowed to counter much, given polls that show many Americans believe Mr. Obama’s 2009-10 stimulus package did not work, despite studies to the contrary.
A Democratic Congressional adviser, granted anonymity to discuss party deliberations, said: “We’re at a loss to figure out a way to articulate the argument in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”
In a column in The Washington Post on Friday, Bill Gross, who runs the giant bond-trading firm Pimco, lashed out at Republicans and “co-opted Democrats” for setting aside widely accepted economic theory.
“An anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking,” he wrote. “Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not.”
More evidence that the wingnut right clings to nonsense economic mythology even when experts let them know it is nonsense. Average voters do not have to pretend they agree with GOP nonsense just because we hear so much of it from our dead tree and electronic media in South Dakota. Cowed Democrats need to speak up. Republicans who are not convinced the way to build our country is to make sure the very, very rich who already control something like 90% of US wealth need a higher proportion of American for their own personal benefit.
Democrats need to counter the GOP "Tax and spend" crap with labeling GOP economic nonsense as "Borrow and Squander trickle down failed economics mythology".
Stay tuned even if you don't need "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs" --- Doug Wiken
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