Stimulus Talk Yields to Calls to Cut Deficits

“My best guess is that we’ll have a continued recovery, but it won’t feel terrific,” Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said at a dinner at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Monday night. “And the reason it won’t feel terrific is that it’s not going to be fast enough to put back eight million people who lost their jobs within a few years.”

One could almost envision the winces in the White House as Mr. Bernanke observed that the unemployment rate “will stay high for some time.” He went on to note that even if the economy grew at 3 percent, which would be considered a healthy pace, it would do little more than keep pace with the normal rate of growth of the work force.

Virtually every day of late, White House officials have struggled to explain how their strategies to provide economic stimulus to bring down the unemployment rate square with Mr. Obama’s oft-expressed commitment to tackle a record budget deficit. They talk about spending this year ”” in modest amounts ”” while waiting for the prescriptions of the president’s commission on debt reduction, which reports, conveniently, a few weeks after the midterm elections.

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Posted in * Economics, Politics, * International News & Commentary, Budget, Consumer/consumer spending, Corporations/Corporate Life, Economy, Europe, House of Representatives, Housing/Real Estate Market, Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market, Office of the President, Politics in General, President Barack Obama, Senate, The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--, The Fiscal Stimulus Package of 2009, The National Deficit, The September 2008 Proposed Henry Paulson 700 Billion Bailout Package, The U.S. Government

2 comments on “Stimulus Talk Yields to Calls to Cut Deficits

  1. Dilbertnomore says:

    Perfect that he served up this indigestible stew of intellectual CYA at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars which is dedicated to “the ideals and concerns of Woodrow Wilson,” the true guiding light of the blight of Progressivism/Liberalism that has plagued us for lo these many years. We have Wilson to thank for entangling the US in World War I, the Income Tax (16th Amendment), direct election of Senators (17th Amendment), the United Nations (spawn of the League of Nations) and the monster federal government budget busting junk handed us by his progeny – Roosevelt, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama.

  2. Capt. Father Warren says:

    And interesting that his crystal ball view of the next several years is not denounced 24/7 by the media who decried unemployment of 5% under Bush as the “end of the world as we knew it”, actually they used more alarmest words than that.
    So, in November, are we going to be sheep who continue to allow ourselves to be afflicted with this disease of Progressivism or are we truly going to throw the bums out of office and elect conservative supporters of the Constitution?