applies to our situation. slashing spending when you have depressed economy is really destructive. it s counter productive in purely fiscal terms because it damages your economy, damages future tax receipts. spain doesn t have a choice. spain doesn t have its own currency. we do have a choice. we shouldn t be doing that. we should be sustaining government spending until we have a stronger economic recovery. when is that, though? whenever we have an opportunity we don t do it, do we? that s not true. people talk as if it s this fated thing. we squander surpluses. no we don t. we re doing fine at the end of the 1990s. then came along george bush who said we have a budget surplus let s cut taxes and fund two warriors. that didn t have to happen. it wasn t an invisible force majeure. so we actually, our track record if you take the longer term is not bad.
have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. don t wait. call now. don t disguise bad odors in your trash. neutralize them and freshen. with glad odorshield with febreze. remember when republicans won big spending cuts in 2011? republicans can take credit for forcing the largest budget cut in history. republicans felt that was a good deal. slashing spending was a policy win for conservatives. fast forward to this month and the new deal to reopen the federal government, those cuts were extended again, another conservative policy victory, but
increasingly than economy where folks at the top were doing better and better and better, but the average individual or family was seeing their incomes and their wages flat lining. and you start getting a tale of two americas. and the whole premise of upward mobility in this country, which is central to who we understand ourselves to be, was being diminished for too many people. so from my perspective, reversing that trend should be washington s highest priority. it s certainly my highest priority. unfortunately, what we ve seen in washington all too often is instead of focusing on how do we bring good middle class jobs back to america, how do we make sure the economy is growing robustly and that growth is broad based, we ve been spending a lot of time arguing about whether we should be paying our bills that we ve already accrued. or the discussion has been about slashing spending on education
sequester. the 5% figure is about equal to the level of automatic spending cuts to most of the federal government which took effect on march 1st. now, the cynics would say it s clearly a political move. if you follow politics you have probably heard that the republicans are winning the sequester debate. that s the conventional wisdom in washington and the media. but it totally misses the point. the idea is that slashing spending has helped the gop because so far the cuts have not caused a major crisis. and the stock market is surging. but this all depends, i think, on how you define a crisis. lots of upper and middle class americans do own stock and so, sure, their portfolios have jumped 10.1% this year. that s enough to take some people s minds off the sequester. but another 140 million americans have no stock holdings at all. and over 12 million are unemployed. so the bull market does nothing for them. and as it happens, those are the same people hit hardest by these cuts. consider i
europe that truly applies, that transfers to our situation? well, the main thing we learn is that slashing spending, when you still have depressed economy, is really destructive. it s probably even counterproductive even in purely fiscal terms because it damages your economy, damages future tax receipts. spain doesn t have a choice. spain doesn t have its own currency. but we do have a choice. and so we should not be doing that. we should be doing we should be sustaining government spending until we have a stronger economic recovery. when is that, though? because whenever we have an opportunity, we don t do it, do we? this is actually not true. people talk as if it s this faded thing. oh, we always squander surpluses. no, we don t. we actually we re doing fine at the end of the 1990s. then along came this guy named george bush who said we have a surplus, that s cut taxes that have two unfunded wars. that was a politicalizati decis and it wasn t an invisible force of nature th