via HuffPo:
Obama said [Thursday] he believes that the best way to reduce the deficit is through economic growth, and that by contrast, cutting back on government stimulus too early could stifle the recovery.
"Now, if we can't grow our economy, then it is going to be that much harder for us to reduce the deficit," Obama said. "The single most important thing we could do right now for deficit reduction is to spark strong economic growth, which means that people who've got jobs are paying taxes and businesses that are making profits have taxes -- are paying taxes. That's the most important thing we can do." […]
Worries about Obama's willingness to keep spending is rooted in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's experience. In 1937, FDR bowed to deficit hawks and cut spending, jerking the economy back into what became known as the recession-within-the Depression or, alternatively, the Roosevelt Recession.
Seeking to avoid an Obama Recession, the president said: "The last thing we would want to do in the midst of what is a weak recovery is us to essentially take more money out of the system either by raising taxes or by drastically slashing spending. And frankly, because state and local governments generally don't have the capacity to engage in deficit spending, some of that obligation falls on the federal government."
Obama may be listening far too much to the neoliberal fantasists, fraudsters, and futurologists who created this catastrophic corporate-militarist mess we're in, but it would appear that he is at least listening to some actually sensible progressive voices as well. Keep watching closely. Much depends on infrastructure investment and jobs creation initiatives over the next seven months if Democrats are to hold governing majorities through the mid-terms and keep Movement Republican forces from regaining a foot-hold from which to destroy the country.
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