{"id":5846,"date":"2014-08-28T13:20:07","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T05:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/?p=5846"},"modified":"2014-08-28T13:20:07","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T05:20:07","slug":"budget-deficit-remains-on-track-for-six-year-low-msnbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/28\/budget-deficit-remains-on-track-for-six-year-low-msnbc\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget deficit remains on track for six-year low | MSNBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we discussed\u00a0in May, the federal government recently raised taxes and cut spending, which invariably means a smaller deficit.\u00a0This remains a basic budgetary truism that Republicans continue to resist. Indeed, last year, when top marginal rates increased on households making more than $400,000 a year, a variety of GOP lawmakers argued that this would likely cause the deficit to go up \u2013 as they saw it, higher taxes on the wealthy would slow growth, which would mean fewer jobs, which would mean fewer people paying income taxes, which would mean a larger deficit.\u00a0And we now know they were wrong \u2013 again \u2013 though this will probably\u00a0do nothing to shake the Beltway perception of the GOP as the \u201cfiscally responsible\u201d party.\u00a0Let\u2019s also note that the shrinking deficit \u2013 we\u2019re seeing the fastest reduction since the end of World War II\u00a0\u2013 is also one of the nation\u2019s best-kept secrets. It was just last year when an independent national poll asked Americans whether they thought the deficit was increasing, decreasing, or staying about the same. Only 6 percent of the country recognized reality. That\u2019s not a typo; it was just 6 percent.\u00a0The fact remains, however, that the annual budget deficit is on track this year to have shrunk by about $900 billion since President Obama took the oath of office.\u00a0Responding to the news today, a Republican spokesperson for the House Budget Committee told The Hill, \u201cToo many families are living paycheck to paycheck, and if this report is any indication, things aren\u2019t getting much better. We need to get spending under control, so we can build a healthy economy and expand opportunity for everyone in this country.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s the sort of quote that helps capture everything that\u2019s wrong with the debate over the deficit. If the economy is struggling, the GOP argument goes, it\u2019s imperative that Congress take capital out of the system and reduce demand. By most sane measures, that\u2019s bonkers, but Republicans won\u2019t let their uninterrupted streak of being completely wrong get in the way of ridiculous rhetoric.
\nvia Budget deficit remains on track for six-year low | MSNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we discussed\u00a0in May, the federal government recently raised taxes and cut spending, which invariably means a smaller deficit.\u00a0This remains a basic budgetary truism that Republicans continue to resist. Indeed, last year, when top marginal rates increased on households making more than $400,000 a year, a variety of GOP lawmakers argued that this would likely … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Budget deficit remains on track for six-year low | MSNBC”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-reposts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}