WhatFinger


But throughout Obama's presidency, we've had a pathetic economy. The numbers don't lie.

If we just had normal growth, we could have a $500 billion surplus this year



I commented on Friday about the Wall Street Journal commentary by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) in which he offered several good ideas to spur economic growth. But there was something else about that column that really struck me as I looked back on it.
Sen. Cassidy points out that the U.S. economy has grown on average by an annualized rate of 3.73 percent since the nation’s founding. If growth had merely continued at that average pace throughout the Obama presidency, even with all of Washington’s excessive spending, we would have a budget surplus of $500 billion this year. Instead, we have seen average annual growth of only 2.2 percent under Obama, and we have a $500 billion deficit (which actually represents one of the better performances of the Obama presidency). This is both encouraging and maddening at the same time. It’s encouraging because it shows that, as serious as our debt and entitlement challenges are, there is a solution readily at hand. What we need to do is return to the growth rate we’ve averaged throughout our history – or better yet, adopt truly strong growth policies and get ourselves into the realm of consistent growth around 4-to-5 percent. And it’s not that hard to do that. You simply adopt policies that are friendly to wealth creation and capital formation. You cut taxes on productive aspects of the economy like income, investment and production, and you simplify the tax code so people aren’t wasting time and energy trying to game the system when they could simply be producing and earning.

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I don’t even think that would be hard to sell to the public if you simply had political leaders who understood how to do it. But it’s maddening . . . because we have an administration that rejects these principles completely, and because even the leadership of the Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t seem interested in seriously advocating real growth policies. They are so worried about appearing to “favor the rich” or whatever else that they merely settle for negotiating Obama’s socialism down a little – if they can. This is not to say we shouldn’t get federal spending under control. We should. And don’t believe the Keynesian liberals who try to claim that federal spending is what drives growth. That’s a crock. Real growth is driven by productivity in the private sector. We could spur that by cutting taxes. And we could rocket-boost it by getting rid of all the restrictions on the development and distribution of oil and natural gas in this country. We don’t need spending from Washington to spur growth. But when you realize that we could eliminate the budget deficit – even without cutting spending – just by adopting real growth policies, doesn’t that make you want to scream? Why don’t politicians want to do this when it so obviously holds the promise of improving our situation? The answer, of course, is that they are interested in political power more than they are in empowering the people. If politicians step out of the way and let the private sector drive growth, what do they get to control? How can they dole out favors? How can they buy votes? These are the things the political class lives to do. And you’re paying a gigantic price because they would rather do that than simply get out of the way and let you drive the solution to the problems they’ve created. If you want to stop paying that price, I suggest you stop electing that kind of politician. And start electing those who not only understand the power of growth, but are willing to support the policies that will allow it to happen.


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