WhatFinger


Good start. More of this please

Second quarter growth was better than first believed, now revised to 3.0 percent



The nation doesn't put much emphasis on economic growth. It should. The expansion of the economy in the form of productivity is the single-greatest thing that can happen to alleviate our debt situation, manage the entitlement problem and raise people's standards of living. The greatest failure of the Obama presidency - and for sure you have a long list to pick from - was the failure to average better than 2.0 percent annualized GDP growth. It was the worst post-recession economic performance since before the Great Depression. The usual snapback you get from a recession simply never materialized as the Democrats choked off growth with punitive taxes, regulations and artifically inflated labor costs.
If there's one thing the Trump Administration can do to heal the nation from these wounds, it's to get economic growth on a solid, consistent footing in which 3.0 percent becomes the floor and 4.0 to 5.0 percent becomes a goal we attain with some regularity. So the newly revised report concerning second quarter growth represents only a good start, but considering what we suffered through the past eight years, we should take it gratefully:
Gross domestic product increased at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the April-June period, the Commerce Department said in its second estimate on Wednesday. The upward revision from the 2.6 percent pace reported last month reflected robust consumer spending as well as strong business investment. Growth last quarter was the best since the first quarter of 2015 and followed a 1.2 percent pace in the January-March period. Economists had expected that second-quarter GDP growth would be raised to a 2.7 percent rate. Retail sales and business spending data so far suggest the economy maintained its stamina early in the third quarter.
Now keep in mind that only a limited portion of President Trump's economic agenda has been implemented. What he's been able to do via executive order in the areas of energy development and regulatory reform are important - far more so than you'd think from the scant coverage they get. These moves have allowed businesses to invest and hire with more confidence, and have given the U.S. a major leg up in world energy markets. Those are not just one-time developments, which is why economists are already talking about the third quarter as likely being just as strong, with minimal impact from Hurricane Harvey.

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If the economy had grown at an annualized rate of 3.0 percent instead of 2.0 percent throughout the Obama years, we would likely have shaved a couple trillion dollars off the national debt and flooded world markets with U.S. goods. But we need to reform the tax code and do something about health care if we're going to see 4.0 or 5.0 percent growth on even a semi-regular basis. Way too much money is being usurped third-party payers in health care, while businesses and individuals are wasting far too much time and too many resources on tax-avoidance strategies when they could be simply producing and reaping the rewards of their efforts. This is why I have little sympathy for the Betlwayesque argument that President Trump is blowing the legislative agenda with his tweets and whatever else - upsetting members of Congress such that they don't want to support his policy priorities. Bolshevik. You're elected to Congress to support the policies that benefit the nation, not to have a conniption fit and take your ball home because the president bothers you. And I have little patience for it-may-not-be-right-but-it's-how-things-work arguments. It's not right. Period. If you're a conservative Republican and you refuse to support the Trump agenda because you don't like the way the president acts, go back and think about why you ran for office in the first place. And if you're a liberal who wears the Republican label for whatever reason, leave office. That means you, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain. The growth we saw in the second quarter was a good start, but it's not the best we can do. We need better policies, and they're ready to be implemented. We just need legislators who actually think that's important.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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