Which Budgets Cuts Could Hurt The Economic Recovery?

New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The budget deal struck last week amounts to a bet by the Obama administration that the loss of $38 billion in federal spending will not be the straw that breaks the back of a fragile economic recovery.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[blindhammer]

12:25 PM on 04/13/2011

An economic recovery that depends solely upon perception rather than numbers is not an economic recovery.

[calypsolouie]

12:05 AM on 04/13/2011

Businesses have already started adding jobs now that they know their are finally some adults in congress. As usual the republicans have to save this countries economy

[Arts4u]

04:49 PM on 04/12/2011

“It has to come from exports for the United States to be able to sustain growth,” said Olivier Blanchard, one of the authors of the report.

Now, aren't you guys that supported all the outsourcing of manufacturing kicking yourselves?
You know, the cheap crap which needed to be replaced two months later anyway?

[StJames]

02:25 PM on 04/12/2011

I think it was pronouncements like this that made him the patsy....

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.
Herbert Hoover

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/herberthoo130505.html#ixzz1JKoMxvCP

[Arts4u]

04:52 PM on 04/12/2011

Manufacturers should be required to bring it all home. I know I'm not buying anything until they start to do so.

[StJames]

05:26 PM on 04/12/2011

You must be wondering how I wandered into this comment...lol.  It was a reply that I misplaced.


But I am with you 100%.  My computer needs replacing, but I will not do it.

[rikster]

02:20 PM on 04/12/2011

all of them...

[nothingchanges]

01:54 PM on 04/12/2011

Cutting taxes for the wealthy assures massive amounts of cash in campaign fund coffers. That's the only economy that really matters to those in Washington today.

They HAVE their jobs, excellent health care, and extraordinary benefits. "Entitlements" most of the rest of us........... can only envy.

[omobob]

12:42 PM on 04/12/2011

This is not a budget but an agenda. An agenda right starts with taking money from the seniors on fixed incomes, Vets, the middle class and the poor. The money moves towards the haves from the have nots.

Medicare. One of the most popular of entitlement programs, the health care system for the elderly has a rapidly growing constituency that is highly suspicious of politicians. critics re sure to raise the specter of increased costs for those who live on fixed incomes.

Medicaid. Critics will say it will shift costs to the states and to the individual patients and reduce access to care. Democrats have fought the idea fiercely in the past, and are likely to do so again.

Spending. Republican budget proposal would roll back spending to 2008 levels and freeze it, though not for defense — a favorite of conservatives.

[blackranger]

12:16 PM on 04/12/2011

Mr Obama should take a page from the fdr book. FDR met with students from the major economic colleges in Europe and the US and asked their opinions about solutions. That is how Keynes surfaced. Somewhere out there are some young folks with a new grasp on global economics, how the future will work, we need their input NOW. There is basically one school of economics in the US and it is way outdated. Noone really knows how a global economy works, but in many universities around the world, students are addressing these issues with the fresh eyes of youth. FDR figured that out, Obama needs to follow suit.

[jazzman]

10:39 AM on 04/12/2011

We now have the Obama 'Herbert Hoover' Presidency. Cutting spending and eliminating jobs during a recession and then hoping that it won't be so bad as to sink the economy is dangerous thinking because States all across the country are doing exactly the same thing.

It only takes so many small things to add up to a big thing. After all if you weigh a snow flake it weighs almost nothing but put enough of them on a branch and they'll break the branch. Such is the situation with all the spending cuts being enacted by a country that can't seem to face it's economic reality and do what's necessary to get things going again.

Soon we'll either experience another recession/depression or we'll have our own lost decade followed by years of malaise.

[crm2008]

11:45 AM on 04/12/2011

No one should complain. This is what happens when the masses didn't come out to vote in the November 2010 mid term elections, and you let extremism take precedent over intelligence, common sense, and humility towards mankind.

The very same people who caused the collapse of the US economic system and global prowess have been placed back into power in the House, and the misinformed masses are expecting a different result by the very same people who's economic policies and decision making destroyed the US economy, are somehow thinking the Repubs will be different and are expecting a different result?....What a joke and a bunch of fools the people who voted these clowns back into office are.

[RED66]

12:13 PM on 04/12/2011

Actually not.

A lot of Representatives and Senators lost their seats.

[garystartswithg]

01:25 PM on 04/12/2011

i obviously missed the intelligence, common sense and humility toward mankind that were voiced 2009-2010. trusting democrats is just as destructive as trusting republicans.

[RED66]

12:13 PM on 04/12/2011

Except that Herbert Hoover didn't cut spending. That is a myth perpetrated by those who idolize FDR:

Franklin Roosevelt didn't reverse course upon moving into the White House in 1933; he went further down the path that Hoover had blazed over the previous four years. That was the path to disaster.

Hoover, a one-time business whiz and a would-be all-purpose social problem-solver in the Lee Iacocca mold, was a bowling ball looking for pins to scatter. He was a government activist fixated on the idea of running the country as an energetic CEO might run a giant corporation. It was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who initiated the practice of piling up big deficits to support huge public-works projects. After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920s, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 -- increasing by more than 50%, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.

Public projects undertaken by Hoover included the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Hoover Dam. The Republican president won plaudits from the American Federation of Labor for his industrial policy, which included jawboning business leaders to refrain from cutting wages as the economy fell. Referring to counteracting the business cycle and propping up wages, Hoover said: "No president before has ever believed that there was a government responsibility in such cases . . . we had to pioneer a new field."

[garystartswithg]

02:38 PM on 04/12/2011

The Hoover/Roosevelt debate rages on, I think its a good idea to look at the congress they had to work with, and imho both made really horrible decisions. No president has been worse on immigration than Roosevelt, and ironically we gained some of our most famous immigrants under him -- Einstein, Dali, Mies van der Rohe. Who knows how different the country would be now if we accepted all of Europe's liberals instead of cherry picking them. Roosevelt had an innate contempt of Asians -- once even writing mixing European blood with Asian blood was disasterous.
Infrastructre is always a good investment. Its something that most presidents have missed since Eisenhower. Perfect example is the high speed rail -- its capped at a couple billion when anyone that works in urban planning could tell you what is needed isn't a pet project but a real high speed rail in either the northeast or linking LA to San Fran that would cost more, but still costs a lot less than our "occupation" in Pakistan.
What people don't know is the post war economy was a direct result of Roosevelt selling our military overseas -- we were merceneries for hire, not the freedom fighters you learn about in 7th grade. By blurring the simple facts in history books you the narrative that war in and of itself is somehow good for the economy.