{"id":2647,"date":"2009-12-14T14:33:19","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T19:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2009-12-14T15:08:48","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T20:08:48","slug":"white-house-debt-what-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/2647\/white-house-debt-what-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"White House: Debt? What Debt?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The White House has made the decision that debt, all <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usdebtclock.org\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">$12 trillion<\/span><\/a> worth of it, no longer matters in America.\u00a0  Instead of attempting to lower the $1.4 trillion annual budget deficit, the White House is looking for another round of stimulus pork.<\/p>\n<p>According to White House Economic Advisor Christina Romer, it would be <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB126076138473190099.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">\u201csuicide\u201d<\/span><\/a> to focus on deficit reduction to the exclusion of \u201cjob creation.\u201d\u00a0  Her solution, of course, is to repeat the past two\/three failed stimulus bills and spend another $50 billion on infrastructure. \u00a0 In Washington, D.C. that means $5 billion on infrastructure and $45 billion on pork and other preferred government handouts.<\/p>\n<p>Romer\u2019s solution is odd considering <a href=\"http:\/\/www.econ.berkeley.edu\/~dromer\/papers\/RomerandRomer.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">this paper<\/span><\/a> she authored with her husband <strong>in April <\/strong>(after she began working at the White House) that concluded each dollar of tax cuts historically raised Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $3, greater than many similar estimates of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/13\/business\/economy\/13view.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">government stimulus spending<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Romer also concluded that tax increases can easily lower GDP.\u00a0  As she wrote, \u201cOur results indicate that tax changes have very large effects on output.\u00a0  Our baseline specification implies than an exogenous tax increase of 1% of GDP <strong>lowers real GDP<\/strong> by almost 3%.\u201d\u00a0 There appears to be a big difference between Doctor of Economics Romer and White House employee Romer.<\/p>\n<p>With all this knowledge about the virtues of tax cuts and the harm of tax increases, Dr. Romer should pay a visit to the West Wing occasionally and remind President Obama that his policies will continue to shrink GDP and impede job creation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The White House has made the decision that debt, all $12 trillion worth of it, no longer matters in America.\u00a0 Instead of attempting to lower the $1.4 trillion annual budget deficit, the White House is looking for another round of stimulus pork. According to White House Economic Advisor Christina Romer, it would be \u201csuicide\u201d to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[633,81,59,14,105,71,44],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-christina-romer","tag-debt","tag-deficit","tag-president-obama","tag-tax","tag-taxes","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2649,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}