Are we about to drag out of this Republican Dystopia: economy improves despite GOP's treachery?

[Bill USA]

6. Yes, the Republicans can certainly congratulate themselves on how much they sabotaged the -

efforts of Obama and the Dems to produce a solid recovery to the Republican Trickle Down Deregulation disaster.


Legacy of the Trickle Down Deregulation disaster
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3252

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that because of the Recovery Act, the unemployment rate has been lower each year since 2009 than it otherwise would have been. The maximum effect was in 2010, but CBO estimates that even in the fourth quarter of 2012 the unemployment rate was 0.1 to 0.4 percentage points lower than it otherwise would have been and employment was between 0.1 million and 0.8 million jobs greater than it otherwise would have been.
(more)

The recovery could have been stronger and quicker but the GOP, reliably, fought every effort to rebuild our economy from the damage wrought by the Republican Trickle Down Deregulation disaster. By filibustering and killing most jobs bills offered by Democrats they have obstructed by one estimate over 4 million jobs. The Wall Street Journal, no hotbed of "liberalism" has stated that without the cuts to Government programs demanded by Republicans (in some cases to preclude a Government default and in another to stop Republicans from shutting down the Government) the unemployment rate would be one full percentage point LOWER than it is today.

For more on all the treacherous actions of the GOP to sabotage the recovery read below....


http://www.democraticunderground.com/101644072


[div class="excerpt" style="border: 3px solid #EEBBBB;"] On the day of Barack Obama's innauguration, leading members of the Republican party, met and decided they would engage in a campaign of obstruction of everything Obama would try to do. Mitch McConnell famously declared that the top priority of the Republican party was to see that Barack Obama was a one term president. To that end, the Republicans set records for filibustering legislation. They have fought everything Obama tried to do to produce a recovery from the economic disaster they created. They even voted against a deficit reduction commission (in 2009, before Bowles-Simpson) THEY PROPOSED - BECAUSE PRESIDENT OBAMA SUPPORTED IT! (see "Why Washington is tied up in Knots" - Time http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1966451,00.html and "Do not ask what good we do." Robert Draper).


President Obama's first legislative act to repair and rebuild the economy from the Great Recession, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), was filibustered by the Republicans such that Obama had to agree to downsize the stimulus by converting 38% of it to tax cuts in order to win two Republican votes to get the bill passed. At the outset of a depression, people worried about whether they would have a job in six months will not spend a tax cut, but will save it our use it to pay down their debt. Either way, that portion of the ARRA converted to tax cuts would not be stimulative to the economy. The Republicans knew this. That’s why they demanded a large portion of the stimulus be converted to tax cuts. This resulted in the original stimulus being smaller than it should have been (without the conversion of 38% of the stimulus to tax cuts the stimulus would have been 61% LARGER (1/(1-.38) = 1.61).


In the Budget Battle of 2011 the Republicans threatened to force a closure of the Government if the Democrats didn't agree to cuts to domestic programs. In the Debt Ceiling extension battle, the Republicans threatened to force a U.S. default on its debt if Obama didn't agree to significant cuts in Government programs - in that same fiscal year. These domestic spending cuts lead to states laying off policemen, fireman, teachers and other public servants - adding to the number of already unemployed. The Wall Street Journal published an article which pointed out that if it weren't for cuts to Government domestic programs, the unemployment rate would be a full percentage point lower than it was at mid-year 2012 ("Unemployment Rate Without Government Cuts: 7.1%", WSJ, May 8, 2012 - [link:http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/09/number-of-the-week-unemployment-rate-without-government-cuts/.

The threat of a default on the U.S. debt lead Standard and Poor's to the extraordinary step - never before taken - of downgrading the United States Credit rating. (Standard and Poors cited among the causes for the unprecedented step “political brinksmanship” and public policymaking being “less stable…less predictable”:

“The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as
America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective,
and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt
ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in
the debate over fiscal policy."

United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+'
Due To Political Risks, Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative, Standard and Poor’s, 05-Aug-2011]
http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245316529563

The Republican party’s threats of Government default and Government closure have so concerned businesses that they have held off hiring full-time permanent workers, keeping the unemployment rate elevated and restraining the recovery. Businesses have been sitting on a five trillion dollar hoard of cash and have refrained from hiring back more people. Businesses do not want to hire full-time permanent people, only to lay them off in six months. Not knowing how far the Republicans might go to kill the recovery, businesses rather than hiring more people, have been making more use of over-time and contract labor ("The $5 Trillion Stash: U.S. Corporations' Money Hoard Is Bigger Than the GDP of Germany",The Atlantic, July 18, 2012 (see: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-5-trillion-stash-us-corporations-money-hoard-is-bigger-than-the-gdp-of-germany/260006/ ); “Cash-Hoarding Companies Neither Spend Nor Lend, Fouling Economy Further”, Huffington Post, July 12, 2012 - see; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/cash-hoarding-companies-spend-lend-economy_n_1666424.html).

Any appraisal of the success of President Obama’s economic policies that leaves out the fact that these policies prevented the economy from collapsing even further and reaching an unemployment rate of perhaps 11%, or higher, is incomplete and invalid. The Congressional Budget Office report concluded that President Obama’s economic policies, in fact did just that (“Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output From October 2009 Through December 2009", CBO, February 23, 2010 (see; http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3095 ) and “CBO: Unemployment would have topped 11% without stimulus”, USA Today, 2010-02-23 see: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/02/cbo-unemployment-would-have-topped-11-without-stimulus/1 ).

The Republican filibustered and prevented President Obama’s American Jobs Act from being passed. Moody’s Analytics concluded this bill would have raised the GDP 2%, increased employment by about 2 million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate about 1% (Analysis of the Obama Jobs Plan, Moody's Analytics, Sept 9, 2011 see; http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=42610). So, a decrease of the unemployment rate of 1% prevented by the Republicans and an increase in the unemployment rate of 1% caused by Republican demands for more domestic spending cuts to preclude a Government Default and Government shutdown had a significant negative impact on the recovery. The total impact of these acts of legislative sabotage is an unemployment rate that is 2% points higher than it would have been had Obama been able to more fully realize his policies of stimulating the economy out of this Republican Trickle Down Deregulation disaster. The cited efforts to sabotage the stimulus notwithstanding, the CBO has concluded that the unemployment rate without the ARRA, would be 3% points higher than it is now.

Now, I would be remiss, if I did not inform you of some sources of information for you to gain a better understanding of what has been going on in Washington the past several years. One is the book by Thomas Mann (The Brookings Institution) and Norman Ornstein (the American Enterprise Institute (note: a conservative group)) entitled: "It's Even Worse than It Looks" wherein they detail the machinations, over the last few years, of the Republican Party which they call an "insurgent outlier". These two scholars of the political scene also wrote an oped in the Washington Post entitled: "Let's just say it: the Republicans are the Problem" (see: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/opinions/35453898_1_republican-party-party-moves-democratic-party ). Here's an excerpt from that piece(emphasis my own):

"We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges."