Binyamin Appelbaum and Catherine Rampell write From Spending to Cuts, While the Economy Stalls:
Last week brought the disconcerting news that the economy grew no faster than the population during the first six months of the year, in part because of spending cuts by state and local governments. Now the federal government is cutting, too.
(h/t to Trix)
“Unemployment will be higher than it would have been otherwise,” Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, said Sunday on ABC. “Growth will be lower than it would be otherwise. And inequality will be worse than it would be otherwise.”
He added, “We have a very weak economy, so withdrawing more spending at this stage will make it even weaker.” [...]
The economy grew at an annual rate of only 0.8 percent during the first half of the year. Millions of homes remain empty. Twenty-five million Americans could not find full-time jobs last month. And even without the debt ceiling deal, federal spending is in rapid decline. Little remains of the federal stimulus money. Payroll tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year.
Barack Obama:
Now, is this the deal I would have preferred? No. I believe that we could have made the tough choices required -- on entitlement reform and tax reform -- right now, rather than through a special congressional committee process. But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need, and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year.
John Boehner:
Now listen, this isn’t the greatest deal in the world. But it shows how much we’ve changed the terms of the debate in this town.
Lewis Black:
Unbe-fucking-lievable.
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
After it was revealed that there was an undisclosed relationship between the Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier, Karl Rove and John McCain’s campaign, and the documented bias shown by the AP since Fournier took over, you would think they would at least make an effort to put out an unbiased story. You would be wrong.
Yesterday Associated Press writer Charles Babington wrote what was ostensibly an article critical of John McCain, but in reality Babington bent over backwards to minimize and explain away McCain’s problem with “details.”
At times McCain can appear to be short on details. In some instances, he has made misstatements or eyebrow-raising comments during the long days of campaigning in front of cameras and microphones. Sympathetic listeners call them understandable slips of the tongue and question whether any candidate can know everything. Opponents call them gaffes, or worse.
[...]
And of course Babington forgets to mention the three separate occasions where McCain showed that he either forgot, didn't know, or lied about Iran, Shiites and Sunnis. Those are two examples where McCain has shown an appalling lack of understanding about fundamental elements of the war that he claims to be an expert on, yet Babington ignores one, downplays the other and tells us that John McCain has a breezy nature.
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