Republican Shutdown Deepens U.S. Economic Damage

The GOP government shutdown is causing deepening trouble to the U.S. economy.

A new report from Macroeconomic Advisers (commissioned by the Peterson Foundation) found that the near-constant budget disputes have lopped one percentage point off US growth and cost two million jobs since 2010. Or, to rephrase: political disputes have cut growth by about a third and kept two million people from work. Now, the Peterson Foundation is known best for its 20 years of failure advocating “entitlement reform” (read: social insurance cuts), but that makes this report perhaps even more striking. Even the Peterson people think we’ve been cutting spending too much…

Failing to raise the debt ceiling, meanwhile, would be much, much worse. Not only would the government have to slash spending drastically, the ensuing deep recession would crater tax revenue, necessitating even deeper cuts, and so on…

There’s little new here aside from a formal demonstration of what was already obvious on an intuitive level. Deep austerity and economic hostage taking as a negotiating tactic have done enormous damage to the United States. The Republicans who have repeatedly triggered these crises are distinguished solely by their total immunity to economic and political evidence, or their blatant disregard for the well-being of the American people, or both.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.