August 07, 2013
Greg Sargent catches PolitiFact being out to lunch big time. On one of the Sunday talk shows House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the deficit is growing. Politifact examined the claim and rated it “half true.” Its logic was that even though the deficit has been falling sharply over the last 4 years, and is projected to fall more over the next two years, it is projected to rise later in the decade.
This one is a real mind bender. After all, the rapid pace of deficit reduction has been a big factor in slowing GDP and job growth according to the Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysts. That is a very important fact in understanding the economy today. It is seriously misleading to turn this reality on its head because of projections that the deficit will start rising in 3 years.
This would be like saying that people coping with sub-zero temperatures in the middle of January, without heat in their homes, should be worried about dealing with high temperatures because forecasters project that April and May will be warmer. The immediate and near future problem is obviously the sub-zero temperatures, no sane person would worry about the comfortably cool temperatures three months in the future.
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