{"id":240,"date":"2013-05-10T12:04:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T12:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/10\/deficit-reduction-is-an-economic-downer"},"modified":"2013-05-10T12:04:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T12:04:00","slug":"deficit-reduction-is-an-economic-downer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=240","title":{"rendered":"Deficit reduction is an economic downer?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

I might have to change my way of thinking on the wisdom of reducing the federal budget deficit if some high-powered private- and public-sector economists are correct.<\/p>\n

They say that reducing government spending and tax increases have slowed the economic recovery and that the jobless rate might be a percentage point lower than it is today if we didn\u2019t do those two things in 2011.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/09\/us\/deficit-reduction-is-seen-by-economists-as-impeding-recovery.html?_r=2&<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on here? Didn\u2019t the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Reps tell us that deficit reduction was Job One the past two years \u2013 right up there with defeating President Barack Obama? And didn\u2019t they tell us that slashing government spending would jumpstart the economy by handing it all over to the private sector, which is so much better at job creation than the federal government? As for taxes, didn\u2019t the Democrats tell us that rich folks who could afford to pay more should do so and it wouldn\u2019t harm middle-income Americans\u2019 pocketbooks?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still grappling with trying to understand which strategy is more wrongheaded \u2013 spending reductions or tax cuts. I\u2019m tending to believe that severe government spending cuts has been the big inhibitor.<\/p>\n

More than three decades ago, Ronald Reagan ran for president when the deficit was a then-staggering $40 billion annually. The economy was in the tank and he blamed President Jimmy Carter for wrecking the nation\u2019s economy, not to mention turning out national mood so sour. The voters agreed with him, electing Reagan president in a stunning landslide in 1980. The economy continued to stumble along for the first two years of his presidency, then it took off \u2013 right along with the deficit.<\/p>\n

Now some economists are saying that deficit spending isn\u2019t the bogeyman Republicans have labeled it.<\/p>\n

Time to rethink everything \u2026 maybe.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I might have to change my way of thinking on the wisdom of reducing the federal budget deficit if some high-powered private- and public-sector economists are correct. They say that reducing government spending and tax increases have slowed the economic recovery and that the jobless rate might be a percentage point lower than it is … Continue reading Deficit reduction is an economic downer?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}