Wall Street Journal And AEI Throw The Tea Party And GOP Under The Economic Bus

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Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 11:54 am

Remember when President Obama said the private sector is doing fine, and all the conservatives and Republicans poked at that comment? Well, now even two major conservative publications are saying the same thing!

The Wall Street Journal stated, “Falling military spending and the end of federal stimulus programs are further slowing the already weak U.S. economic recovery.”

The article went further and said,

“Federal investment and spending is down 3.3% for the year and about 0.4% for the second quarter.” “But the budget cuts come at a tough time for the U.S. economy, which has lost steam after appearing to accelerate earlier this year.”

The federal cuts are a reversal from the recession, when Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to spark growth by increasing federal spending through bailouts and stimulus programs.

Most economists believe the stimulus programs played at least some role in softening the recession’s blow,…”

This Wall Street Journal article coincides with what I wrote regarding the American Enterprise Institute report.

The American Enterprise Institute is a conservative think tank and their article vindicates President Obama. Their article stated the the private sector has grown an average of 3% per quarter since the recession ended in 2009 under President Obama, but total GDP is down because of spending cuts in the public sector.

The public sector GDP has dropped to negative 2.88% over the last two years. What does this do to total GDP and the overall economy? It slows it down dramatically!

So as the private sector struggled to gain momentum, Republican cut backs slowed down the private sector growth with a negative public sector growth.

The government purchases things from the private sector daily. They purchase trucks, cars, lawnmowers and even computers from the private sector. What happens when the government cuts back and stops buying things? The private sector slows down also, which begins the snowball effect of layoffs in the private sector.

So now not only do Democrats have their think tanks on their side, they even have the Wall Street Journal and AEI are on their side on this issue! Time to turn up the heat on the tea party and the GOP.

Tell them, it’s not President Obama who is slowing the economy — the private sector is doing fine under him, but we could help the private sector even further by increasing public sector investments and purchases.