How Republicans Sabotaged the Recovery

[Bill USA]

(emphases my own)
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/07/23/how_republicans_sabotaged_the_recovery?page=full

Sometimes, mistaken ideas can be harmless or even humorous. But in a crisis, they can be downright dangerous. By the time Obama took office, Lehman Brothers had failed, and the Treasury was already trying to prop up banks and other financial institutions to prevent a complete collapse of the economy. In addition, the nation had undergone a tremendous fiscal transformation. Back in 2000, the United States had expected to rack up more than $4 trillion in budgetary surpluses over the coming eight years, but the Bush administration enacted tax cuts that brought the tax burden for upper-income Americans down to the lowest levels since the 1940s. These cuts, combined with two expensive wars and a short recession, sent the nation into deep deficits. The new president faced an enormous task to revive the economy -- one that he could not complete without Congress's help. Together, they would have to protect Americans from a prolonged economic slump while attempting to chart a course toward a more fiscally responsible future.

[font size="3"]Not everyone in Congress was in a mood to cooperate. Stung by their electoral defeats and facing Democratic domination of both houses, the Republicans did everything they could to slow the new president's agenda, from filibusters and procedural votes to delayed appointments and partisan bickering. Clearly, the election campaigns of 2010 and 2012 had already begun, and Republicans were determined to stop the new president from keeping his promises. But in the early days of the financial crisis that began in September 2008, the Republicans knew that they had to seem like they were doing something about the economy, too.

So when Obama cast himself as a compromiser ready to temper the legislative proposals of the Democrats in Congress, the Republicans got whatever they could from him -- often while Obama's supporters cried foul -- and made sure to water down his proposals as well. It started with the first stimulus package. In January 2009, Obama announced his proposal for a combination of tax cuts and new spending worth $825 billion over the coming decade, including more than half a trillion dollars in the first two years. By this point, the value of the economy's annual output of goods and services had already shrunk by about five percent, adjusted for changes in prices, since its peak in the fourth quarter of 2007. This was a big hole to fill, easily worth half a trillion dollars a year. The stimulus wouldn't replace all that had been lost, but it might prevent a bad situation from lasting longer and getting worse.[/font]

In the end, Congress agreed to $787 billion in stimulus spread over 10 years. Would it be enough? Some economists already had their doubts. Even Christina Romer, who would soon chair the president's Council of Economic Advisors, had pushed Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary and Obama's top economic advisor, to recommend $1.8 trillion in stimulus to Obama in December 2008. Across the Pacific, China had just announced its own stimulus package of $586 billion over just two years -- and that was for an economy only a third the size of the United States that had no deficits problems and was still expected to grow quickly for many years. If the American economy still stood on the brink of a new recession a year or two years hence, the president and Congress would have to consider another attempt. After all, Americans would be suffering the pain of joblessness, foreclosure, and bankruptcy until the economy returned to strong growth.
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of course, none of this really happened to go by the silence of the corporate media talking heads. Since Obama took office, the word 'filibuster' is a taboo word on M$M. The economy is recovering very slowly because Obama got everything he wanted in terms of stimulus programs and job creation bills. He didn't have to compromise on anything he wanted in order to keepthe GOP from filibustering it to death.

Yep, that's about right, in the land of corporate media (i.e. GOP) myths.

[Historic NY]

1. I want him to fail was the GOP agenda from day #1.

[Bill USA]

2. as far as Corporate media GOP echo chamber it never happened. They keep asking why can't Obama fix

the economy as if the Repugnants haven't been filibustering and fighting every effort Obama and the Dems have mounted to get the economy back on track.

In May of this year even the Wall Street Journal had an article pointing out that if we had not had the cuts to Government programs (demanded by GOP to allow various bills to pass) the unemployment rate would be a percentage point lower than it is right now.

The M$M talking heads keep repeating the GOP talking point that Obama's policies on the economy have not worked. But they are pretending that Obama got everything he wanted through Congress, which is a nonsense. But the GOP sycophants of M$M keep pretending that very fantasy is true.

[mother earth]

3. It needs repeating on a daily basis, these bastards have held this country down & back, and they

brought us to the abyss. They think they can wave the abortion flag and stage instant amnesia, and for the foolhardy it works.
They made everything good impossible, every solution or measure was made useless, the filibuster was their weapon of choice & the truth of that abuse must be repeated and echoed again and again. We've been in limbo because of their greed, while they silently kill off the backbone of this country.