The CBO Report: Six Things You Can’t Talk About in Washington, DC [View all]

[KoKo]

The CBO Report: Six Things You Can’t Talk About in Washington, DC

By Richard (RJ) Eskow



Whom the gods would destroy, the old saying says, they first make mad. And there’s no quicker way to become completely untethered than to read economic reports, including the latest one from the Congressional Budget Office, and then watch the political debate go on as if reality didn’t even exist.

The short version of the CBO’s report is: Spending’s going down, but we desperately need jobs. So how did the president and Congress respond? They kept arguing about who’s got the better plan for making spending go down some more.

If you want to be taken seriously in Washington, you’re going to have to learn: There are some things you just don’t talk about.

1. Don’t Talk About Jobs

The CBO report predicts that the Federal deficit this year will be under $1 trillion, if the “sequester” or other cuts of similar magnitude go into effect, for the first time in five years.

The CBO doesn’t expect the Gross Domestic Product to fully recover from the Wall Street recession for another four years, until 2017. The problem is the “output gap” between the goods and services we could and should be producing, and what we’re actually producing. That, too, is the result of the 2008 crisis. This gap results in lost prosperity for the great majority of Americans, excluding only the wealthiest among us

Much More at.......

http://www.nationofchange.org/print/36251