Venango County Tea Party Patriots

A non-partisan, non-profit, non-member, association dedicated to educating the public and promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market economics, and all other lawful activities.

recession

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US Chamber Says Immigration “Reform” Needed to Create Jobs!!

U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Tom Donohue unveiled a wide-ranging plan to create jobs through boosting domestic energy production, reforming the tax and entitlement systems and slashing red tape facing the private sector.

Delivering his annual State of American Business address, Donohue scoffed at suggestions that the country’s slow comeback from the 2008 economic crisis is owed purely to the severity of the recession.

“Misguided government policies have also slowed our growth and cost Americans a lot of jobs, and a lot of raises,” Donohue said.

Donohue called for enactment of a sweeping immigration reform, and the repeal or replacement of major provisions of the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.

He vowed to use the Chamber’s political operation to advance its agenda in the election year, putting lawmakers on notice that it will reserve is considerable clout for those who support business-friendly policies.

“In primaries and in the general election, we will support candidates who want to work within the legislative process to solve the nation’s problems — and who understand that business is not the problem, business is a big part of the solution,” he said.

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Economic Impact of Fiscal Cliff

Washington is in a dither over the fiscal cliff. The cliff consists of roughly $500 billion in tax increases that will occur on January 1, 2013 as the Bush-era tax rates expire, along with almost $100 billion in automatic cuts in government spending resulting from the sequester negotiated last year in the deal that extended the tax rates through 2012.[1]

According to conventional wisdom, the resulting drop in government spending and consumer demand will shock the economy, causing it to slow or possibly fall into a recession. While Americans are right to be worried about the economic effects of the fiscal cliff, the subject of that concern should be on the production side of the economy, not the demand side—especially over the long term.

Certainly, we can expect some short-term adjustments in the economy from a cut in federal spending as people leave federal jobs and projects for other work. But, as Milton Friedman pointed out in the 1960s, other things equal, a rise in revenue and drop in spending would reduce federal borrowing and free up saving for others to borrow and spend. There would be no effect on total demand unless the Federal Reserve were to slow its purchases of government debt in reaction to the fiscal shift, and that effect would be due to the change in monetary policy, not the fiscal policy by itself.

The real and very dangerous effect of the fiscal cliff is what the tax rate increases would do to production over the long term.

Read more.

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24 Stats on How Obama Messed Up Economy

After every other recession since World War II, the U.S. economy always regained what was lost and got even stronger before the next recession began. During this “economic recovery”, we have not even come close to getting back to where we were in 2008. In fact, the number of Americans living in poverty and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government both continue to explode even as Barack Obama runs up trillions of dollars of new debt. Anyone that believes that Barack Obama is going to “fix the economy” if he is given another four years in the White House has taken way too many sips of the Obama kool-aid. The truth is that Barack Obama is not going to save you. Barack Obama has royally messed up our economy (along with a lot of other things) and that is not something we should be thanking him for.

Yes, Barack Obama is not solely responsible for the economy. In fact, he does not even have the most influence over the direction of the economy.

However, if he had been willing or able to actually do what was necessary to fix the economy, he certainly had ample opportunity.

Read more.