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What Politician’s Refuse to Discuss about the Economy

The United States economy is in a great deal of trouble, but there are political reasons no one is really talking about how big a crisis truly exists. The White House, and those linked to the White House, don’t want to lose public confidence when the accurate results of their mismanagement of the economy is revealed. Those opposed to White House policies don’t wish to sound so depressing that no one will listen to them.

The U.S. debt  is rapidly approaching the $20 trillion-dollar mark. Half of all that debt was accumulated during the Obama Administration.  Gross domestic product was at $18.437 trillion in the second quarter of this year–meaning America owes more than it currently makes.  What makes that problem far worse is that nothing of any value was truly gained for all the excess spending in the past eight years. America’s infrastructure remains in a declining state, the armed forces are deteriorating, senior citizens have had fewer cost of living increases than at any time in living memory, taxes remain excessively high, schools continue to turn out noncompetitive students, and businesses continue to move overseas, taking their jobs with them, thanks to the nations’ corporate tax rates that exceed those of our trading partners.

Under current policies, no upswing is in sight. In fact, some key observers such as Deutsche Bank believe that “The U.S. has a 60% of entering a recession in the next 12 months—the highest probability since the Great Recession.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that in fiscal year 2016, the federal budget deficit will increase in relation to economic output for the first time since 2009. “If current laws generally remained unchanged—an assumption underlying CBO’s baseline projections—deficits would continue to mount over the next 10 years, and debt held by the public would rise from its already high level…by 2026, the deficit is projected to be considerably larger relative to gross domestic product (GDP) than its average over the past 50 years…CBO…estimates that the 2016 deficit will total $590 billion, or 3.2 percent of GDP, exceeding last year’s deficit by $152 billion (see table below). About $41 billion of that increase results from a shift in the timing of some payments that the government would ordinarily have made in fiscal year 2017; those payments will instead be made in fiscal year 2016 because October 1, 2016 (the first day of fiscal year 2017), falls on a weekend. If not for that shift, the projected deficit in 2016 would be $549 billion, or 3.0 percent of GDP—still considerably higher than the deficit recorded for 2015, which was 2.5 percent of GDP.”

The Congressional Budget Office also predicted that in fiscal year 2016, the federal budget deficit will increase in relation to economic output for the first time since 2009. “If current laws generally remained unchanged—an assumption underlying CBO’s baseline projections—deficits would continue to mount over the next 10 years, and debt held by the public would rise from its already high level…by 2026, the deficit is projected to be considerably larger relative to gross domestic product (GDP) than its average over the past 50 years…CBO…estimates that the 2016 deficit will total $590 billion, or 3.2 percent of GDP, exceeding last year’s deficit by $152 billion (see table below). About $41 billion of that increase results from a shift in the timing of some payments that the government would ordinarily have made in fiscal year 2017; those payments will instead be made in fiscal year 2016 because October 1, 2016 (the first day of fiscal year 2017), falls on a weekend. If not for that shift, the projected deficit in 2016 would be $549 billion, or 3.0 percent of GDP—still considerably higher than the deficit recorded for 2015, which was 2.5 percent of GDP.”
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Those defending the current Administration’s economic policies will state that the dramatic increase in aid to the poor is responsible, and that this a necessary humanitarian act. (The SNAP program, often referred to as food stamps, is up by about 40%.) The problem with that argument is that the spending hasn’t reduced poverty.  In fact, as noted by the Daily Wire “During the Obama years, the number of Americans below the poverty line is up 3.5 percent.” Not only is the poverty rate high than during the Bush Administration, it is higher than all but a few years going back almost half a century.

Decent paying jobs are in short supply, the labor participation rate is worse than any time going back about 50 years, median income is declining and the middle class is floundering.

Despite the dismal status, there is a roadmap for recovery, one followed by former presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Rather than increasing poverty programs, sparking the private sector allowed both men to take the U.S. economy from the doldrums to growth. Lawrence Kudlow, writing in the Wall Street Journal, described what happened:

“Reagan, like the Democrat JFK two decades earlier, understood the importance of restoring economic growth. In 1980, Reagan adopted Rep. Jack Kemp’s “duplication” (as Kemp called it) of the Kennedy tax cut. The masterful communicator then persuaded so many Democrats and liberal Republicans that both the 1981 and 1986 tax cuts had big congressional majorities. The 1986 act passed the Senate 97-3 and took the top income-tax rate down to 28%, one of the lowest levels ever. Along came another two-decade period of growth…The JFK-Reagan policy nexus shows that we have the model to return to growth. It works. There is no reason the model cannot be used again now.”