Republicans in Congress are threatening to manufacture an economic crisis unless they’re permitted to slash spending. Meanwhile, we’re in an economic crisis in which the main problem is too little spending. So the choice we’re being presented with is that we can either worsen an existing crisis or trigger a fresh one. With our leaders acting so irresponsibly, perhaps it’s no mystery why we’re having a recovery-less recovery, either.
"There's nothing that you can look at here that is signaling some revival in growth in the second half of the year, and in fact we may see another catastrophically weak quarter next quarter if things go wrong next week," said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. By "things going wrong," he said he means "if Congress actually starts implementing a massive contraction by suddenly cutting government spending immediately," as many Republican representatives hope to do.
