Republicans rip White House over finger pointing in wake of dismal GDP report

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

Republicans accused the White House of having selective amnesia Wednesday after President Obama's top spokesman blamed Republicans for an unexpectedly dismal GDP report that showed the economy contracting in the fourth quarter. The White House had suggested GOP willingness to let sweeping defense cuts take effect was the culprit -- but an aide to House Speaker John Boehner quickly reminded Democrats that Republicans have tried to stop those cuts.

"These arbitrary, automatic cuts were a creation and demand of the White House in 2011," Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said. "Twice the House has passed legislation to replace them with common sense cuts and reforms. If there was any uncertainty late last year about the sequester, it was because the Democratic-controlled Senate, per usual, never lifted a finger to pass a plan to replace it."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi earlier alleged that GOP feet-dragging during talks over the fiscal crisis and willingness to accept automatic defense cuts contributed to the economic squeeze. The Commerce Department report showed the economy shrinking for the first time since 2009.

"Consumer confidence overall has been rising, and consumer spending has been rising, but there's more work to do, and our economy is facing a major headwind ... and that's Republicans in Congress," Carney said Wednesday.

The White House press secretary blamed "talk about letting" automatic spending cuts kick in, "as though that were an acceptable thing."

Carney, however, glossed over the fact that both Democrats and Republicans agreed to the 2011 debt-ceiling legislation that set in motion more than $500 billion in defense cuts. Lawmakers had a chance to nix those cuts by agreeing to a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan -- but they couldn't reach a deal. While a few Republicans had discussed letting the cuts kick in, most congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle still say they want to avert them.

________

 

Playing the blame game.

[Valin]

Question: Were The Republicans talking about this in Oct. Nov.? Because if they were, I missed it.

[Valin]

No, the negative fourth-quarter GDP report doesn’t prove ‘austerity’ is killing the US economy

James Pethokoukis

January 30, 2013

 

US economic output fell at a 0.1% annualized rate in the fourth quarter, adjusted for inflation. Blame spending cuts, say the Democrats. Blame Republican “austerity.” And one more thing: Stop the sequester. As the Center for American Progress put it: “The economy most certainly would have grown at a faster rate were it not for the ongoing political brinksmanship over the debt ceiling and the risk of sharp fiscal contraction in the form of the pending automatic ‘sequestration’ budget cuts.”

 

If you break down the GDP report, you begin to see the problem with this line of argument. Private-sector GDP actually added 1.2 percentage points to overall GDP during the past three months. A decent rise in consumer spending was slightly offset by a drop in business investment and a rise in imports. Government spending, however, subtracted 1.3 percentage points, turning the overall GDP number slightly negative.

 

But so what? Liberals are confusing a metric used to measure the size of the US economy with the actual US economy. What if GDP internals were reversed? What if government spending contributed 1.2 percentage points, and the private sector subtracted 1.3 percentage points? The overall GDP report would have been superficially the same, but in reality much, much worse with the real economy contracting.

 

(Snip)

[Draggingtree]

1/30/2013

 

Initial Q4 GDP Negative 0.1. Negative. UPDATED

 

Filed under: General— JD @ 12:28 pm

[guest post by JD]

Let that sink in. Q4 GDP negative 0.1. Yet immigration is now his new focal point. Remember when he pivoted to jobs for the 82nd time, and wouldn’t rest until the economy was back on track?

Recovery summer. The economy has turned the corner. We are on the right track. The private sector is not hurting.

In other new, the Presidents Jobs Council, which hasn’t met in almost a year, will expire this week.

This is going to be a looooooooooong 4 years of Obama’s war on the American economy.

UPDATED

Shockingly and unexpectedly, Obama Administration blames Republicans for the negative 0.1%

WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blamed the unexpected drop in gross domestic product last quarter on congressional Republicans,

 

 

http://patterico.com/2013/01/30/initial-q4-gdp-negative-0-1-negative/

[Draggingtree]

January 31, 2013

If Ezra Klein were any more stupid we’d have to elect him to public office

I mean, honestly. It’s like they’re not even trying any more. Klein, “Government is hurting the economy — by spending too little”.

Now, ordinarily, this is the place where you’d find an extended quote from the linked piece , followed by my rebuttal of whatever “progressive” argument it strains to make. But I’ve come to conclude that my time is just to precious to waste on these kinds of rhetorical trial balloons (incidentally, Jay Carney made a similar argument yesterday, before blaming the state of the economy on the GOP), so I’ll just say this: the baseline budget that keeps automatically renewing itself contains the “one-time” stimulus money that Obama was going to pour into “shovel-ready jobs”

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=46989