And you thought an oil leak was bad? WH pans jobs, embraces cuts.

[jtuck004]

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_new_white_house_economic_strategy

I wish so badly this was on the front page of the Onion...

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. This is a great article. You should include a snippet, if you can.

[geckosfeet]

2. Deficit reduction kicked butt during the Clinton era. We are all looking at Greece

and Spain and the euro and trying to head the US version of economic failure off at the pass. To ignore debt, as the repuglycans have for the last 8 years is not fruitful.

The Real National Debt

But I do agree that the political implications are difficult. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I cannot imagine the Oministration throwing the repuglycans a bone of this magnitude with no compensation.

[HillbillyBob]

3. Deficit reduction= no help for those screwed over

but we can still afford the fucking wars!!

[sendero]

4. Obama is quickly going from..

... uselessly benign to actively malignant.

[Kat45]

5. I can't believe a Democratic administration is thinking like this!

According to this article, they're basically considering all the wrong things. This commission was a bad idea from the outset, but why the heck is it loaded with fiscal conservatives WHEN WE HAVE A DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION!! The claim is that polls show that voters care more about deficit reduction than jobs? Huh? Who did they poll? Did they self-select for only fully employed people? And cuts in social security? That's heresy. During the previous eight years when the deficit was run up, I never heard a word spoken about deficit reduction. That's the exact wrong thing to do during a recession (close to a depression). I hope this isn't the last word on the subject; this is really pissing me off!

[RM33]

6. If this is true

It it is true that people care about deficit reduction, then it must be because of the bad news coming from Greece and California.

But this is bad news. Raising taxes and cutting spending in a recession will make the recession worst.

[angryfirelord]

7. Exactly

This isn't something radical or anything (of course, any government action is "radical" to a conservative), deficit spending during recessions has always been the consensus among economists. I don't understand why the Obama administration would take the deficit hawk approach when even Reagan used deficit spending during his 2 terms.

It's common sense what you do with the deficit. You reduce it during the boom because you don't need as much of those services in a healthy economy and you spend more in a recession to help soften the blow. Instead, we're deficit spending in good times and now we're cutting back on spending when we need it the most! :crazy: