Presidential election, 2016

[David Horn]

(11-27-2016, 09:17 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: The discussion was about the debt, not the deficit.

However, it's to be noted that the highest deficit on your chart was in 2009, Obama's first year, due to his patronage, er, "stimulus" spending, and it went down mostly after the partial shutdown that the Tea Party folks forced.

Deficits come and go.  Most are necessary, due entirely to weak economic performance ... or used to be at least.  Now, we have a party that cuts taxes and runs deficits for ideological reasons.  When the tax cuts are mostly for the wealthy, the side benefit of demand stimulus is all but absent, so let's be honest about deficits, what they do and what they don't do. 

Keynes had a degree of insight that we ignore at our own peril.  Like Darwin, his vision was incomplete, but the basic structure has worked as designed.  Choosing to ignore known success in the hope of creating an alternative success that meets your ideological standard is only deemed wise if it works.  Supply side policies, and phlegmatic displays of concern about debt, have not yielded anything of value ... nothing!  Keynes hit it on the nose.  There is no value to economic policies that ignore the storm but celebrate a long delayed calm years in the future after the crisis has burned itself out.  Yes, demand will return on its own, because eventually things need to be replaced.  That's not policy.  It's futility.

So Obama's stimulus was too small and, post 2010, largely redirected toward preferred GOP tax cuts.  We are now in our 8th, soon to be 9th, year of recovery, and the economy is still anemic.  The direct blame goes to the GOP House majority, with the Senate majority and Obama getting dishonorable mention.  But let's not laud the success of the obstructionists.  They are the problem.