Seeing the Forest

JOBS: Romer, Leaving WH, Says More Stimulus Needed. Right Says Stimulus Killed Recovery

Dave Johnson — 2010-09-02T13:54:54-08:00

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Before I start this post, let's look at the actual situation. The economy is terrible, people are really hurting, they have been holding out and are starting to drop off the map. There are signs that with the stimulus fading things are starting to turn back down. But compared to what?

The overall jobs picture:

The manufacturing jobs picture:

Finally, the huge deficits. The context of this next chart is that Bush's last budget year left us with a $1.4 trillion deficit! The projected budgets from this President will cut this in half in the next few years.

You can see for yourself from the pictures. (chart source) Under conservative policies everything was spiraling downwards. The stimulus clearly worked and stopped the death sprial, but was not enough. According to the Congressional Budget Office,

The massive U.S. stimulus package put millions of people to work and boosted national output by hundreds of billions of dollars in the second quarter, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday. . . . CBO said President Barack Obama's stimulus boosted real GDP in the quarter by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent, adding at least $200 billion in economic activity.
It raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs during the second quarter of this year, CBO estimated.

The stimulus worked but was not enough. Economists Agree: Stimulus Created Nearly 3 Million Jobs,

Eighteen months later, the consensus among economists is that the stimulus worked in staving off a rerun of the 1930s. [. . .] It's no surprise that the administration would proclaim its own policies a success. But its verdict is backed by economists at Goldman Sachs, IHS Global Insight, JPMorgan Chase and Macroeconomic Advisers, who say the stimulus boosted gross domestic product by 2.1% to 2.7%.

The stimulus worked but was not enough.

What Now?

In the context of this picture of the economy, President Obama's economic advisor Christine Romer is stepping down. In her departing speech she said that the economy needs more stimulus to get us to the point where private business is again driving the economy. Romer Calls for More Stimulus,

U.S. Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christina Romer, in her final speech before stepping down, called on the country to stomach new stimulus measures to lift the lackluster economy, even in the face of growing fears about the nation’s deficit.
“Concern about the deficit cannot be an excuse for leaving unemployed workers to suffer,”

The clear conclusion from all available evidence: The stimulus worked, but it was not enough. In addition, in an effort "to attract Republican votes" that never came, 1/3 of the stimulus was wasted on tax cuts that leave nothing behind but debt. Much of the package was emergency relief for the unemployed, the states, and other emergency safety net programs but won't contribute to job-creation and reviving business. Only a fraction went to infrastructure, which is the soil in which business thrives and the country maintains its worldwide competitiveness,

The American Society of Civil Engineers puts the bill’s infrastructure spending at $71.8 billion, or less than one-tenth of the package.

The stimulus worked but was not enough. Economists are calling for more stimulus and extending unemployment benefits.

What The Right Says

Meanwhile conservatives are placing their bets on benefiting from a worsening economy, and so are blocking things that might help. Conservatives correctly believe that the worse the economy is doing, the better the chances that they will pick up more House and Senate seats in the coming elections. So it is in their interests to make sure that is what happens. Capitalizing on the shock the nation felt when it heard about the size of the deficit the previous administration left behind, conservatives are trying to block attempts to add stimulus.

And with the original not-enough stimulus fading, the right is trying to drive a narrative that "government spending kills jobs." This follows decades of "tax and spend" rhetoric that claims that "taxes take money out of the economy," "government spending slows the economy" and similar nonsense. The original "starve the beast" plan to kill government and democracy by denying them the funds they need is on the verge of succeeding.

To drive this strategy they claim that it is the stimulus itself which has kept the economy from recovering. Newt Gingrich, in Fire the Job Killers,

The big government stimulus bill, the tax increases of the health bill, the plan to let the 2003 tax cuts expire, and the massive growth of government under the Obama Administration are all actions directly attributable to this administration which have killed jobs.

Gingrich even claims that helping the unemployed, not the recession, is the cause of the unemployment!

A few weeks ago in this newsletter, I cited a study by Robert Barro which estimated that without the extension of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, the unemployment rate would be 6.8% instead of 9.5%.

Republican House leader John Boehner recently gave a speech on his economic plan in which he said that the economy is "stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending" and "each dollar the government collects is taken directly out of the private sector." (An NDN study found that following the Boehner economic plan will add $4.188 trillion to the debt.)

Some other voices on the right:

Murdoch's NY Post: Romer admits stimulus failed

Dr. Christina Romer is leaving the Obama administration, and in her final speech she admits that the stimulus did not work to revivie the economy as she had hoped and as President Obama promised.

Malkin's Hot Ait: Romer: We had no clue … and still don’t

Instead of cutting taxes (especially capital gains taxes) and reducing regulation to entice new investment, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats chose to chase a government takeover of health care, a massive tax on energy production that would penalize expansion and growth, and expanding the jurisdiction on Wall Street of the same agencies that had watched the collapse come and did nothing about it.

Except, of course, 1/3 of the stimulus was tax cuts. (Further proving that tax cuts leave nothing behind but more debt.)

These are just a few samples from the drumbeat.

America faces a choice. The stimulus worked but was not enough. So we can proceed with "reality-based" solutions that have helped, and demand more stimulus, or we can go back to conservative policies that killed the economy.

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How Companies Turn People Against Unions

Dave Johnson — 2010-09-01T22:09:05-08:00

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

If you had a company and could make people work for free, keeping all the proceeds just for yourself, you might do that. If you could. What’s stopping you? There are plenty of unemployed people in the country and in the world – more every day thanks to population growth, and computers and machines doing more of the work that needs to be done. So if someone complains, you can just replace them with someone who doesn’t complain. You have the power. So what’s stopping you?

As a working person, how do you negotiate for fair pay, benefits and rights where you work? People in a job can be on their own against a lot of power, taking whatever the employer is willing to trade for their work. Or they can join with the rest of the employees at the workplace and negotiate as a group. Banding together to fight for a fair share is called organizing into a union.

People who own companies think that the company is their “private property” and they can do what they want with it, regardless of the effect on the people who work there or the surrouding community. Their goal is to make as much money as possible and to do that you lower costs as much as possible. Those costs include the cost of disposing of harmful waste products, the quality and safety of the products produced, and the pay and benefits you provide workers. In this equation unions are a problem. They have the power to make you pay more and provide safety and benefits, so they are in the way of keeping as much as you can just for yourself.

Obviously the greater society -- the people who make the rules that companies are supposed to follow -- has very different interests from the people who own companies. Society wants to avoid being exposed to harmful waste products, and wants the people in the society to be paid well and have good benefits. Society wants healthy communities. Society wants good and safe products that don't use up our resources. The people in the society are generally going to want rules that lead to better results for the greater number of people. Unless they can be convinced otherwise.

So the owners of companies try to convince us that unions are bad. They form and fund "business groups" like the Chamber of Commerce, to fight to keep unions from having the right and power to organize their workers. We hear it repeated over and over in our corporate-dominated society, a drumbeat that labor unions are sinister, shady, harmful, corrupt, violent, “raise prices,” ”cost jobs,” and generally hurt the economy and country. We hear they force workers to pay dues (never mind that unionized workers pay the dues from higher pay and benefits.) We hear that "union bosses" tell workers what to do and "union thugs"make them do it. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. The owners of companies have a lot of money to spend on convincing the public to let them have free reign, and they know from selling products how to sell things to the public. Repetition, repetition and repetition. Marketing works.

This Labor Day weekend we can expect to hear even more of this. Business groups plan Labor Day blitz against Senate Dems, candidates,

Local chapters of groups like the National Federation of Independent Business, state Associated Builders and Contractors and other commerce and retail groups will hold events on Monday targeting the incumbents and candidates, particularly on their stance on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or "card-check").

But you shouldn't expect to see, hear or read on any corporate-owned TV station, radio station or newspaper about the benefits to people from joining a union. Think back and see if you can remember the last time you heard it explained to the public in one of these outlets how members of unions are better off?

How widespread is the anti-labor effort? Here’s a quick, admittedly unscientific check. On Google today there are 54,800 websites that refer to “union thugs,” 154,000 websites that refer to “union bosses” and 200,000 that refer to “big labor.” Please click through and look not only at the ridiculous things being written, but also at who is writing them.

The first page of Google “results for “union bosses” lists anti-union pages from Big Government, The Center for Union Facts , The Washington Times, Human Events, Redstate, Townhall, The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the book “Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics” by Fox News analyst Linda Chavez and Danial Gray of the National Right to Work Committee.

The Center for Union Facts, The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the National Right to Work Committee are anti-union sites funded by corporations and right-wing foundations. According to a report in SourceWatch, The National Right to Work Committee and National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation even share facilities and employees. Big Government, Human Events, Townhall, Redstate, Fox News and the Washington Times are conservative movement outlets that are part of the coordinated Right Wing Noise Machine, or echo chamber, in which a number of outlets appear to be different entities but work as part of a single movement with a shared goal. (P.S. Big Government is the site where the doctored ACORN videos and doctored video of Shirley Sherrod were promoted.)

Admittedly unscientific, but interesting nonetheless. There's a lot of anti-union money floating around out there.

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SS On The Table, But BS Not?

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-31T09:13:39-08:00

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

The President has a commission looking at ways to reduce the budget deficits which were caused by tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases. Social Security – which has no legal authority to borrow money, so it can't contribute to deficits – is on the table for cuts, at least as far as We, the People are allowed to know. (The commission meets in secret.) That's BS.

Another reason we know SS is on the table is that almost all of the members of the commission have spoken in the past of their inclination to cut or privatize the program. That’s BS.

Republican members of the commission have said in advance that taxes will not be on the table. That’s BS.

In fact, conservatives of both parties are arguing to extend the expiring Bush tax cuts for the rich! That's BS.

The country spends up to $1.2 trillion a year on wasteful, bloated military and related programs, more than all the rest of the countries on earth combined, but the commission isn't talking about cutting that down to, say, only three times our nearest possible competitor? That's BS.

Social Security being involved with this commission at all is BS. If they want to cut something they should cut the BS.

If you want to fix the deficits, fix the problems that caused the deficits, not things that can't. Speaker Pelosi said in July that talking about SS and the deficits are like apples and oranges. With this in mind Rep. Raul Grijalva says Congress should preempt this, and demand that Social Security be left alone.

Ask the candidates in your district and state to sign the Hands Off Social Security pledge, and check the list to see who else is on board.

Also, please visit Strengthen Social Security where you can sign up for information, and to follow them on Twitter and/or Facebook.

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America Is Strong When Our Unions Are Strong

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-30T17:40:26-08:00

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

America was formed as a government of, by and for We, the People. It says so right in the first words of our Constitution. To get that Constitution we rebelled against the King and England's aristocracy and their corporations, with their concentrated wealth and power. And we continued that fight and over time we extended our system of one-person-one-vote, adding women and minorities to that equation.

The fight has gone back and forth. When our democratic government works, it pushes for increasing the protections and benefits of a strong economy for We, the People. This has included, for example, the mandated 40-hour workweek and minimum wages to fight exploitation, both pushed by labor. But at other times our government was "captured" by the power of concentrated wealth and working people are not well-represented. Even then we're still not necessarily each on our own. During those times we have depended on labor unions to push back against that power of concentrated wealth. Working people can organize into labor unions to bargain for higher wages and better treatment than workers could obtain individually.

What difference can unions make? In 1945 labor unions represented about 1/3 of all workers. When American unions were strong working people got the minimum wage, the 40-hour week, weekends off, paid vacations, health insurance, pensions, dignity and respect. This was when America built the middle class that everyone has been taking for granted since. Even the wealthy benefited greatly over the long run as more consumers with more money to spend lifted the whole economy.

But what has happened to us since the Reagan Revolution, when concentrated power of the big corporations weakened America's unions? Since the days of FDR membership in unions has fallen, but in 1980 unions still represented 24% of American workers. The Reagan administration famously launched an all-out assault on organized labor, resulting in membership falling to 16.4% by 1989. And the trend continued: by 1998 union membership fell to 13.9 percent. By 2009 that had decreased to 12.3%, but only 7.6% in the private sector. And here are the results:

This is a chart of working people's share of the benefits from our economy. Note the brief return to normal under Clinton, erased by Bush II. But the assault on working people has recently been bipartisan. Clinton pushed to pass the Bush I-negotiated NAFTA treaty which hammered the bargaining position of workers, while Bush II consolidated the practice of "outsourcing" labor competition from non-democratic countries where workers didn't have rights or protections.

As we all know, since the Reagan Revolution weakened the negotiating power of working people, wealth and income have concentrated at the top, our country's debt has massively increased, household debt as well, the country is crumbling and everyone except the wealthy few and big corporations is generally worse off.

Unions still make a difference. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "In 2009, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $908, while those who were not represented by unions had median weekly earnings of $710." Union members also often have paid vacation, paid sick leave, health insurance and other benefits that non-union workers do not. The difference is dramatic. In March 2009, 78 percent of union workers were covered by health insurance through their jobs, compared with only 51 percent of nonunion workers. Seventy-seven percent of union workers participate in defined-benefit pension plans, compared with 20 percent of nonunion workers.

When you hear someone complain about unions and complain that people in unions are paid better than the rest of us, let them know that they are reaching the wrongest conclusion. They shouldn't resent union members and complain about their pay, they should join a union and support unions, so they they and everyone else can come out ahead.

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There's An Election Coming Up

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-30T09:06:08-08:00

Does the White house know that the mid-term elections are just over two months from now? I wonder if someone can wake up the President and ask him to start making a case?

So far the Dems are just letting Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh make the case. This is not good for the country.

Here's What You Do

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-30T07:20:03-08:00

What Can Obama Really Do? | Ian Welsh

So here's what you do. As the Federal Reserve you sell $100 billion of the toxic waste on the open market. Set an actual price for it. Then you make the banks mark their assets to market value. They go bankrupt. You nationalize them. (Why not? They are actually bankrupt after all, and they haven't increased lending like they were supposed to; in fact, they have decreased it.) You make the stockholders take their losses and the bondholders too, then you reinflate the banks. (If the Fed can print trillions to keep zombie banks 'alive' it can print money to reinflate nationalized banks.) The banks lend under FDIC and Fed direction, at the interest rates the Fed directs. The FDIC and Fed eventually break the banks up into a reasonable size. And while they're at it, they get rid of the entire executive class which caused the financial crisis, and have the DOJ go over all the internal memos and start charging everyone who committed fraud. (Hint: that's virtually every executive at a major bank.) Again, this is completely up to Obama - the DOJ answers to him.
Think Obama can't do this without Bernanke? Wrong. Obama can fire any Fed Governor for cause and replace them during a Congressional recess with no oversight.* ('Cause' is never defined, but Obama can note that the Fed's mandate includes maximum employment and not stopping the financial crisis in the first place is certainly plausible as cause as well.)

A Question For Obama Opponents

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-29T14:00:28-08:00

Obama's opponents say he has "increased spending" and "increased the debt."

Can you provide any specifics? WHAT spending has increased? Has Obama increased or decreased borrowing from when Bush was president?

Seriously, please answer in the comments.

Beck Rally Draws 3-500,000

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-28T17:21:33-08:00

Glenn Beck Leads Religious Rally at Lincoln Memorial .

Here's the thing. Beck promotes both Christianity and Ayn Rand, but his followers don't know that Rand strongly promoted atheism, teaching things like this:

"the concept of God is degrading to men."

this:

There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.
This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).

and this,

For Glenn Beck

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-28T16:07:51-08:00

Have you heard it on the news
About this fascist groove thang
Evil men with racist views
Spreading all across the land

Don't just sit there on your ass
Unlock that funky chaindance
Brothers, sisters shoot your best
We don't need this fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

History will repeat itself
Crisis point we're near the hour
Counterforce will do no good
Hot you ass I feel your power
Hitler proves that funky stuff
Is not for you and me girl
Europe's an unhappy land
They've had their fascist groove thang

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan's president elect
Fascist god in motion
Generals tell him what to do
Stop your good time dancing
Train their guns on me and you
Fascist thang advancing

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Sisters, brothers lend a hand
Increase our population
Grab that groove thang by the throat
And throw it in the ocean
You're real tonight you move my soul
Let's cruise out of the dance war
Come out your house and dance your dance
Shake that fascist groove thang

Gotta say I really like this later version:

And this dance remix:

Corporate Power

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-28T15:52:15-08:00

We went into health care reform looking to free ourselves from a predatory industry that was harming us and the country, and get ourselves Medicare-For-All.

We came out the other side with all of us ordered to buy health insurance from the predatory health insurers.

This has been another chapter in democracy v.s. predatory corporatist plutocracy.

GDP Revised Down -- Conservative Trade Policies Exporting Our Growth And Jobs

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-27T13:49:30-08:00

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

When we pack up a factory here -- and all of its jobs and supply chain and its support/.maintenance structure -- and send it all over there to a country that doesn't have the wage and safety and environmental protections we have, just to save a bit of money today we are also sending them the ability to make money in the future. And that future is here now.

The country's second-quarter GDP was revised down sharply to 1.6%. So the "stimulus," by raising GDP somewhere between 1.7% and 4.5%, is the only thing that has kept us from falling completely over the cliff. But we can't just get by on stimulus forever (especially when we waste one-third of it on tax cuts that leave nothing behind but debt). We have to fix the causes of the problems.

One big reason we are having so much trouble is that we haven't solved the trade problem and our efforts to get growth going are just being used to help other countries grow.

In The Washington Post today, Flow of imports drags down economic growth:

The government said the trade deficit subtracted almost 3.4 percentage points from second-quarter GDP - the largest hit from trade in 63 years.

Corporate conservatives talked us into sending our manufacturing out of the country. In the short term some executives got huge bonuses as assets and capacity were sold off and payrolls reduced. But in the long term the ability for the country to earn money has been sent "over there."

I recently came across this talk by Ian Fletcher, author of Free Trade Doesn't Work, given at the Heritage Foundation. I recommend watching, and clicking through to order his book. Ian doesn't come from the left or right (watch him make this clear in the video) but instead just looks at trade with a scientific, fact-based, analytical approach.

Comparative Advantage?

Here is the most important point he makes, 20 minutes in (use that slider bar), in regards to the problem of moving factories to cheap labor countries. Comparative statics: Free-trade economists argue that cheap labor is a "comparative advantage." Fletcher explains that this means that if they are already making something more efficiently, today, then our best move today is to buy it from them. But it doesn't make sense to just pack up an industry and reassemble it in a different country with low wages because then you are doing nothing more then sending away your ability to earn a living.

Yes, as I said, some people make a bunch of money in the short term doing that. But "it's obviously going to cause a decline in our capacity to produce goods and services in the future."

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Psywar

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-26T12:18:52-08:00

Psywar movie. You can watch it online.

Simpson Social Security Comments Highlight Battle Of Democracy Vs. Plutocracy

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-26T07:19:30-08:00

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson is co-chair of President Obama's Fiscal Commission. This is what he said the other day about the relationship between the American people and our government:

"We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits!"

This country that was once run by We, the People with government "of the people, by the people and for the people" has become instead a country where the ruling elites can talk about the public as babies, the unemployed as parasites who are jobless because they are "lazy." The prevailing attitude about the public, from the new Versailles that has grown up around Washington, DC -- what bloggers call "the village" seems to be if you feed them they will breed.

Look at the weird situation we are in today. The wealthy are wealthier than ever. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is bigger than ever. Big corporate profits are soaring and the too-big-to-fail multinational corporations have more power than ever. At the same time wages that were stagnant for decades are now dropping, people with jobs are working longer and harder, more of our people are unemployed and unemployed for longer, more without health insurance, more are depending on food stamps for basic nutrition, more are losing their homes than ever with bankruptcies soaring, and small businesses are barely hanging on or are going under at an alarming rate.

But what are our political leaders up to? On the one hand, the deficit commission is focused on cutting Social Security (which does not contribute to the deficit or debt) at a time when more people need it and need it more than ever. On the other hand many in the Congress are looking for ways to extend the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%.

And few are talking about our government hiring or helping the unemployed, stimulating the economy, or holding the bad actors who caused this mess accountable. In fact, far from talking about helping our fellow citizens, our ruling DC elites have a different view of things entirely. We, the People are just in the way. It is our own tit-sucking fault, they say, and we need to step up and sacrifice because we are not doing enough to help the people who really deserve it: the producers, the "job creators."

Did you catch the rhetorical trick I used above? I said "our" people, and "our" government. How quaint. You don't hear that kind of talk much anymore. Instead you hear about "personal responsibility," which makes everything that is done to someone by the wealthy and powerful their own fault.

This Is About Democracy vs. Corporatist Plutocracy

These battles over cutting Social Security and extending tax cuts for the wealthy expose the competing worldviews of We, the People democracy vs corporatist plutocracy. Is our country a community of the people, by the people and for the people? Or are we "the help," only here for the benefit of the wealthy few.

In the democracy worldview we are a community that takes care of and watches out for each other. We are each citizens with equal rights and equal value, to be respected equally. Our government and economy are supposed to be for us. In the democracy worldview we should be increasing Social Security's benefits because people really need it.

In the plutocratic worldview held by conservatives and corporatist moderates we are "the help," 310 million loafers ("parasites" is the Randian word) sucking their " unearned sustenance" (more Rand) from the tits of the milk cow when we all ought to be working harder because the portfolios of the "achievers" (and more) are down a bit. Your value to society is only what you "produce." Your role otherwise is to "consume." In that worldview the wealthy deserve tax cuts and the parasites shouldn't be getting Social Security checks at all.

So what is it going to be? Will we see and understand ourselves as citizens, who share this country on an equal basis with the rich and the poor, with rights and entitlements, deserving dignity, respect, protection and empowerment from a government that is of, be and for We, the People? Will we demand those things and fight for them? Or will we quietly yield those hard-won rights to our "betters" and allow ourselves to be told what to do, fleeced by giant corporations, hoping to get a flat-screen TV out of the deal if we behave?

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Deficits & Debt

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-25T17:44:53-08:00

Did we have these deficits and debt before Reagan cut taxes for the rich, and the huge rise in military spending?

Tax Cuts???

Dave Johnson — 2010-08-25T14:39:01-08:00

Obama wants tax cuts? Tax cuts leave nothing behind, infrastructure spending leaves behind ... infrastructure!

"The economic team provided an update on the next steps to keep the economy growing, including assistance to small businesses and the extension of tax cuts to the middle class," it said.