Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Jeffery Sachs, an economist and Harvard professor, frequent guest on MSNBC with a long resume of accomplishment (see Wikipedia) takes the Obama administration and Paul Krugmann to task in this thoughtful article which appeared in the Huffington Post. He offers a thoughtful analysis to the economic problems which our country faces and critiques our response to the economic crisis of 2008... Well worth the time to read.

Sachs, a self described Progressive, is hardly a conservative and his article as I understand it is politically neutral, he speaks of necessary investments instead of the undisciplined approach that has been taken. A thoughtful voice of reason coming from the left, for me a pleasant surprise indeed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/professor-krugman-and-cru_b_2845773.html

berchman Loc: South Central PA

What Sachs does not address is how Obama could have been able to get the long term infrastructure investments passed by a Congress sworn to do everything in their power to make him fail.

TimS Loc: GA

Didn't the Dems control both houses of Congress for a couple years???? Haven't they controlled the Senate the entire time? Don't the republicans have but a slight majority in the House?

It seems to me that Obama could get done what needs to be done if be would actually work with republicans instead of bullying them. Instead, Obama has been doing nothing but campaigning since 2006. Even after taking office in 2008, he hasn't really been dong any leading - just campaigning.

berchman Loc: South Central PA

Dems really only had a filibuster-proof majority for around 4 months.

Republicans had full control of everything for 6 straight years and destroyed the economy.

Then, they filibustered every jobs bill and blocked or stalled every presidential appointment, etc.

TimS Loc: GA

Ill have to go back and check but I don't think the refund controlled both houses of congress and the presidency. What six year period do you refer to?

Also, what jobs bills do you refer to also? Govt doesn't create jobs unless it expands itself thereby forcing the creation of previously unneeded (and likely still unneeded) jobs. I seriously doubt that repubs would have Ickes any bill that had a clear nexus to creating private sector jobs. The best way for that to happen is with less regulation, less taxes, and less meddling in how businesses run their business.

As far as appointments, it is patently untrue that they blocked every appointment. However, that being said, they have blocked some (some if which I thought was for nothing more than spite, the others for good reason), but did not act any differently when it's a Repub president appointing people.

Perhaps you can try again. This time with specifics.

berchman Loc: South Central PA

Your initial claim was that Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for two years and always controlled the Senate. That claim has been shown to be in error. Republicans swore to do everything in their power to obstruct and ultimately defeat Obama and they have carried through on their promise. As far as jobs go, see the following news item:

October 20, 2011
Obama’s Jobs Plan Is Blocked Again by Senate Republicans
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — For the second time in 10 days, the Senate on Thursday rejected Democratic efforts to take up a jobs bill championed by President Obama.

The vote to advance the bill was 50 to 50. Democrats needed 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.

This time, the bill was narrowed to provide $35 billion to state and local governments to prevent layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters. To offset the cost, the bill would impose a surtax of 0.5 percent, starting in 2013, on income in excess of $1 million.

Despite the vote Thursday, Democrats said they hoped to gain a political edge, by forcing Republicans to vote on this and other discrete parts of broader legislation proposed by Mr. Obama to create jobs and revive the economy.

Campaigning for his $447 billion jobs package this week in North Carolina and Virginia, Mr. Obama suggested that Republicans could not understand the whole thing all at once, so he said “we’re going to chop it up into some bite-sized pieces.”

The Senate last week blocked consideration of the larger bill, which included a 5.6 percent surtax on income over $1 million.

Republicans objected to the tax and said the bill would be no more successful than the economic stimulus law Mr. Obama signed in February 2009.

The vote late Thursday generally followed party lines. Two Democrats — Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas — and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, joined Republicans in voting against immediate consideration of the bill for public employees.

Both parties seized on the smaller bill to draw contrasts in advance of the 2012 elections.

Democrats said the bill would save or create jobs for nearly 400,000 teachers and force millionaires to make a small sacrifice for the benefit of the nation.

“The massive layoffs we have had in America today are rooted in the last administration,” said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. “It is very clear that private sector jobs have been doing fine. It is the public sector jobs where we have lost huge numbers.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, derided the Democrats’ proposal as “a government jobs bill.” He said it would “impose a permanent tax hike on about 300,000 U.S. business owners and then use the money to bail out cities and states that cannot pay their bills.”

The bill would pay for the hiring, rehiring and retention of school employees, law enforcement officers, firefighters and other emergency workers.

Public employees and labor union leaders joined Democrats, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., at a rally on Wednesday urging the Senate to pass the bill. Mr. Biden said that because of police layoffs, “murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up” in many cities.

Democrats see an urgent need to aid state and local governments, whose revenues have not fully recovered from the recession. The Congressional Budget Office said that less than one-third of new spending under the bill would occur in the coming year, however. It foresees annual spending of roughly $11 billion in 2012 and 2013, followed by $7 billion in 2014, $5 billion in 2015 and $1 billion in 2016.

Unable to pass the full bill devised by the White House, Senate Democrats hope some of the individual pieces will prove more popular with Republicans. Other smaller bills to be taken up in turn would expand the current payroll tax cut for employees, increase spending on transportation and public works projects, and provide incentives for the hiring of unemployed veterans.

For their part, Senate Republicans pushed Thursday for a bill that would repeal a tax compliance requirement that businesses consider extremely burdensome. The provision, adopted in 2006, requires federal, state and local government agencies to deduct and withhold 3 percent of payments they make to many suppliers of goods and services. The requirement was adopted after federal auditors found that thousands of government contractors had substantial amounts of unpaid federal taxes.

Democrats supported the intent of the bill, but blocked its consideration because it would also require unspecified cuts in spending for domestic programs.

Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, said, “We need to repeal once and for all this onerous and costly unfunded mandate.”

Republicans described their proposal as a jobs bill because, as Mr. Brown said, it would “repeal a part of our tax code that promises to kill jobs.”

Enforcement of the requirement has been delayed several times. As part of his jobs bill, Mr. Obama proposed a further delay, to 2014. Businesses say the withholding will disrupt their cash flow and cause administrative headaches.

Cragzop Loc: NYC

[quote=Blurryeyed]Jeffery Sachs, an economist and Harvard professor, frequent guest on MSNBC with a long resume of accomplishment (see Wikipedia) takes the Obama administration and Paul Krugmann to task in this thoughtful article which appeared in the Huffington Post. He offers a thoughtful analysis to the economic problems which our country faces and critiques our response to the economic crisis of 2008... Well worth the time to read.

Let me preface this by saying I consider myself to be a "pragmatic" conservative (Whatever the hell that means, eh?) That said, I studied enough economics to know Keynes NEVER advocated deficit spending during boom times. Government intervention into macroeconomics was to be solely reserved for times of economic contractions.

The problem is that even when we were going through booming times, the government continued to spend, spend, spend. Resulting in inflation, as well as a growing deficit, and a collective psychology of entitlement.

IMHO Keynes had it right: use the power of the government to prime the economic pump during dire times. During booms, increased tax revenues through higher employment levels will pay back the investment.

TimS Loc: GA

Instead of pointing to an opinion piece that doesn't describe how the job bill would create a job, tell me what job creating measures are being blocked by repubs. Just because the title of the bill is a 'job bill' doesn't mean that it actually will create jobs.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Did you even read the Sachs' piece? This is exactly why he says that the president's and the democrats programs have been a failure. They have spent large sums of monies and moved our national debt to dangerous levels while accomplishing nothing.... It is not the federal governments job to fund teachers, now as the national debt becomes so large it has become harder to find the funding to address the real underlying issues that challenge economic growth in this country... such as infrastructure, roads, electric grids, investments in research.... but the money has been spent with nothing to show for it. Sachs points out that the dems took the easy road, spending money for the sake of spending money rather than come up with a comprehensive plan for infrastructure renewal.... Like Obama said "I guess those shovel ready jobs weren't so shovel ready after all.". The fact is that he had no intention of spending that money on shovel ready jobs, he had no intention of investing the hard work and time needed to make a difference that would actually benefit the economy in the long run.... instead he just flushed money out the door and now it looks like he missed his chance... Sachs points to the underlying problems that stifle economic growth in this country, he points to structural problems... and the president did nothing to address those problems, the money is long spent and the same problems persist. You point to a low information piece that bemoans the republicans blocking more of the same wasteful spending that occurred in 2009 and 2010 as some sorta proof that Obama did his job and that it was the mean nasty republicans who stopped this president from fixing the economy... That is BS, it is just following the biased and lazy press to wrong conclusions simply in support of this president.... What did that $787 billion dollars buy us? Nothing, the same teachers are being laid off, the same firemen are facing the same cutbacks and layoffs, the money is gone and the same electrical grids are in need of modernization, the same roads and bridges are still crumbling.... You miss the point... The democratic plan all along was to simply throw out a bunch of taxpayer dollars to support a broken system while doing nothing to fix that broken system....

The president failed, if it were a college exam he would have gotten an F.

berchman Loc: South Central PA

I agree with Sachs. Obama was in with the Wall Street boys. But I don't remember the Republicans putting forth a budget that would do the things Sachs recommended. No, they were too concerned that their rich friends pay as little taxes as possible. Remember that Sachs recommended additional taxes to pay for the infrastructure improvement.

I might also add that without good teachers and plenty of them our populace will continue to fall behind those countries who are serious about educating their youth.

TimS Loc: GA

What Obama thought would work was akin to trying to stop a leaky boat with duct tape. Sure, it will slow the leak and allow you time to bail out water and make it look like, in the short term, that you came up with a brilliant plan. But eventually, the adhesive will fail and the water will come pouring back in the boat. Apply more duct tape and call it a victory because the ware isn't coming in as fast as before. Meanwhile, a person in the bak of the boat is complaining that we keep tryin to throw duct tape at the problem when we really should be heading back to shore instead if staying in the middle of the lake fishing.

All Obama and the dems are doing is kicking the can down the road. They put a little duct tape over the hole an claim success without realizing that they have only a limited supply of duct tape.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

I do agree with you that the republicans did not put forth an infrastructure plan, but let us not forget that during this president's first term that nearly a trillion dollars were spent supposedly to rebuild infrastructure that went to anything but. Teachers are not a federal problem, that problem is not in their wheelhouse. It is up to the State and Local governments to fix their educational funding and union contracts... not to the federal taxpayer.

Sachs' main argument is against the argument that is lead by Krugmann who is really leading the democratic call that spending does not matter as long as interest rates are low... It is amazing how the president, the democrats in congress, and democrats all over the nation have aligned behind that call... Sachs, who calls himself a progressive, points out that deficits do matter and that spending does matter is the structure of the federal debt is not changed as interest rates will be rising in the next few years and the line on the federal budget for interest payments will rival the funding of Social Security and will surpass the funding of both defense and Medicare.... It is a problem and we can not continue to spend as if there will be no repercussions. Debt service will both have a depressing effect on the future economy and will be squeezing out other necessary federal spending, how is it that the democrats and the president himself can not come to terms with this fact?