ROBERT REICH DEBUNKS REPUBLICAN DEFICIT HAWKS

TRANSCRIPT

:01

it looks like congress is heading into another big brawl over the federal

0:11

budget deficit and national debt and the debt ceiling and deficit hawks are going

0:17

to be waving scary numbers don't be fooled here are the three basic

0:22

principles you need to know first deficit and debt numbers are meaningless

0:28

on their own they have to be viewed as a percent of the national economy that

0:33

ratio is critical as long as the yearly deficit continues to drop as a percent

0:38

of the national economy as it's been doing for several years now we can more

0:42

easily pay what we owe second American leads to run larger deficits when lots

0:50

of people are unemployed or underemployed and they still are today

0:54

at millions who remain too discouraged to look for jobs have dropped out of the

0:58

workforce altogether and millions more are in part-time jobs and need full-time

1:03

work as we've known for years in every economic downturn and in every

1:08

struggling recovery more government spending

1:11

helps create jobs teachers firefighters police officers social workers also

1:16

people to rebuild roads and bridges and parks and those jobs and that spending

1:21

multipliers to the economy doing the opposite

1:24

cutting back spending a lot of people are still out of work as congress has

1:28

done with the sequester as much of Europe is done

1:31

causes economies to slow or even shrink which makes the deficit larger in

1:37

proportion this is why austerity economics can be a recipe for disaster

1:41

as it's been in Greece creditors and institutions worried about Greece's debt

1:46

forced it to cut spending the spending cuts led to a huge economic recession

1:52

which reduced tax revenues and made the debt crisis there even worse there in

1:59

finally deficit spending on investments like education infrastructure is

2:05

different

2:05

than other forms of spending because this spending investment spending bills

2:10

productivity and future economic growth is like a family borrowing money to send

2:14

a kid to college respond to business if the likely return on the investment

2:19

exceeds the borrowing costs it should be done keep these three principles in mind

2:25

and you won't be fooled by scare tactics of the deficit hawks and you'll

2:30

understand why we have to end the sequester but more people to work and

2:34

increase rather than decrease spending on vital public investments like

2:38

education and infrastructure

The TRUTH will set you FREE.