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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"The Week" posts a piece of crap -- "Obama's greatest failure: The rapidly falling deficit "
Ever since 2009, when the recession and the stimulus package pushed the annual budget deficit to a peak of nearly $1.5 trillion, it has been falling steadily. Last year it came in at $680 billion; this year it is projected to total $492 billion.
This is an absolute disaster. It is President Obama's single greatest failure, representing the fact that he, and the rest of the American government, did not adequately respond to the Great Recession. It means that millions of Americans were kept out of work, that trillions in potential output was flushed down the toilet, and that the American economy was very seriously damaged, probably permanently, for no reason at all.
Simply keeping government employment on the Bush-era course would have directly created 1.5 million more jobs, and hundreds of thousands more through the multiplier effect, in which jobs beget jobs through increased consumer spending. Another stimulus would have had us at full employment years ago (and possibly would have even paid for itself in fiscal terms).
Instead, we've slashed spending and fired hundreds of thousands of government workers.
Of course, the situation is not entirely Obama's fault, given the pressure he was under from all sides to lower the deficit. His major failing was threefold: underestimating how dangerous undershooting the stimulus would be (despite being warned at the time), banking on a Grand Bargain to shore up his bipartisan credentials in the run-up to the 2012 election, and failing to understand how irresistible austerity would be to Washington insiders. Think of austerity as a big shiny bag of crystal meth, and D.C. elites as a bunch of jittery speed freaks who haven't had a fix in weeks.
More at http://theweek.com/article/index/264151/obamas-greatest-failure-the-rapidly-falling-deficit .
tularetom
(23,664 posts)I didn't read the linked article, but the part you posted seems to be pretty close to the facts.
You can't save your way out of a recession, you've got to spend. Obama just never wanted to spend enough.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)TexasTowelie
(111,938 posts)However, I believe that they are placing the blame on the wrong person.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)the most important part is that it isn't just Obama's fault. Of all the criticisms of the media I've heard, the one that I think is the worst is their bias on the deficit. It's very possible that even here, people don't know that the importance of the deficit is just one side of the debate.
Because the other side, the one in this very good article, is very rarely heard.