The worst case scenario — tax increases to levels of 2000 accompanied by some sharp spending cuts — will put us back on a much faster path to a balanced budget and a reduced federal debt. Going over the so-called “cliff” would hurt growth and likely put us back in recession, but it will also help clean up our long-term problems.
That’s hardly a “crisis”.
I’m hopeful that city staff learned something from their terrible handling of the controversy early in 2012 about the Savannah Slow Ride and their initially poor handling of the issue of horse carriages in City Market.
Not much news yet, but: Longshoremen’s contract on East and Gulf coasts extended for 30 days | savannahnow.com
The unemployment rate has been tumbling even as more people join the workforce. These are robust trends.
We engaged in wars we didn’t pay for. The Bush tax cuts, the first of which came at a time when the federal budget showed surpluses, left the government hopelessly in the red. The recession exacted a huge toll — cutting tax revenues and forcing greater expenditures on safety net programs.
And Obama’s stimulus package cost us, but only temporarily. Without it, we would have certainly seen the economic downturn take an even bigger bite.
One of the big stories of 2012 has been the recovery in home prices across the nation. Home prices apparently bottomed in the spring: even if there is some considerable seasonal weakness this winter, it seems unlikely that home prices…
For short, pithy summaries of key issues facing the economy in 2013, check out Calculated Risk’s Ten Economic Questions for 2013.
“The president’s statement is right,†Mr. Isakson said Sunday on the ABC program “This Week.†“No one wants taxes to go up on the middle class. I don’t want them to go up on anybody, but I’m not in the majority in the United States Senate, and he’s the president of the United States.â€
As I’ve noted here repeatedly, the most expensive items in the federal budget are wildly popular — including with Republicans. Americans like Social Security as it is and don’t want to restrain spending on Medicare — and don’t want deep cuts to defense either.
If you’re interested in keeping up with details about the economy but don’t have the time or interest — or the stomach — to follow daily developments, then you might want to make a point of reading Bill McBride’s weekly summaries that appear every Saturday on his blog Calculated Risk.
Put a couple of reasonable people in a room together, and they could easily split those very small differences.
But it seems that Boehner could not sell that plan to more than half the House Republicans.
So he pushed for a vote on a plan that would have raised tax rates only for those earning over $1 million — a plan that would have also hit working folks hard because of cuts to the child tax credit and earned income tax credit.
“If both sides agree that taxes and spending can be used to offset recessions, then why can’t we use fiscal policy more effectively?”
The CNN reporter George Howell didn’t really get out of Atlanta for this report, but it’s still well worth a watch.
