October 30, 2013
When Morning Edition had former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on saying that we may not have to focus so much on reducing the deficit, it immediately followed up with a discussion from Wall Street Journal editor Mike Wessell, which told people that Summers position was not politically serious. In Washington we have to talk about reducing the deficit.
Apparently feeling the need to further refute the idea that the deficit is not a problem, Morning Edition invited Maya MacGuineas, the President of the business backed group Fix the Debt (correctly identified on the show) to explain why the deficit is such a big problem. In the course of her interview she dismissed Paul Krugman’s correct claim that she and her group have been wrong about every single prediction they have made since the crisis began. Most importantly, they have repeatedly asserted that interest rates would skyrocket because of the deficit.
She also wrongly asserted that the debt to GDP ratio is rising. The Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the debt to GDP ratio is falling. While it does reverse direction by the end of the decade, the latest projections show that the debt to GDP ratio will be lower in 2023 than it is today.
Source: Congressional Budget Office.
This piece might have caused listeners to be confused about the fact that tens of millions of people are needlessly unemployed, underemployed, or out of the work force altogether because of the efforts of deficit hawks to prevent the government from spending the money necessary to put people back to work. The deficit hawks’ efforts to keep the economy below its full employment level of output also has the effect of reducing wages of the bottom 50-80 percent of the workforce.
Note: links fixed.
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