Sunday, August 14, 2011

Consequences Of Republican Priorities

Jackie Calmes offers about the closest a newspaper reporter can come to telling the truth about the consequences of congressional Republican priorities in her NYTimes article:

The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity and anti-tax orthodoxy. Their critiques have grown sharper since, President Obama signed deficit reduction legislation, in which House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he got "98 percent" of what he wanted in the final deal to raise the debt ceiling, and after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States.

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.

Instead, these critics say, Washington should be focusing on stimulating the economy in the near term to induce people to spend money and create jobs, while settling on a long-term plan for spending cuts and tax increases to take effect only after the economy recovers.

But Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail refuse to back down.

Read the rest of Calmes article in the the NYTimes.

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