Comments for Tell Jacob Lew, The Economy, Not Deficit Reduction, Gave the Country a Balanced Budget Under Clinton at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 4 out of 4 comments http://www.cepr.net Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:04:34 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/tell-jacob-lew-the-economy-not-deficit-reduction-gave-the-country-a-balanced-budget-under-clinton#comment-8981 "By far the biggest reason that the budget shifted from a large deficit to a large surplus was much better than expected economic growth." You like to talk about the housing bubble, what if there was not an internet bubble? What would economic growth been without it? - Fed Up Mon, 16 May 2011 15:55:34 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/tell-jacob-lew-the-economy-not-deficit-reduction-gave-the-country-a-balanced-budget-under-clinton#comment-8979 If congress spent half as much time figuring out how to put the 17 million or so unemployed and underemployed people in this country back to work as they do arguing about the deficit, much of the deficit would take care of itself. Apparently that's too difficult a problem, though, for our "leaders" to tackle. It's obviously much easier to just bitch and moan about the deficit and increasing debt and use numbers, real or imagined, to bludgen their political opponents. - S.D. Jeffries Mon, 16 May 2011 15:26:43 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/tell-jacob-lew-the-economy-not-deficit-reduction-gave-the-country-a-balanced-budget-under-clinton#comment-8974 I'm sure you know that starting in 1996 excludes the tax increases by both the Bush and Clinton administrations, which cut the deficit by 1 and 3 percent of GDP, respectively. Without those tax increases surpluses would have been impossible. I'd guess that tax increases will be required now to have a shot at a reasonable deficit targets. But of course growth would be a great jump start in that direction - frank Mon, 16 May 2011 08:38:03 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/tell-jacob-lew-the-economy-not-deficit-reduction-gave-the-country-a-balanced-budget-under-clinton#comment-8957 Exactly. Automatic destabilizers are as important as automatic stabilizers in a deep recession. Without them stabilizers would reel out of control and become unstabilized themselves. This is why automatic spending cuts under Clinton were able to achieve deficit targets, because they offset the unautomatic spending increases that would have overshot the target. Any economist recognizes this as a double negative feedback loop. - izzatzo Mon, 16 May 2011 00:54:32 +0100