Austerity Is The Problem - Not the Solution

This is not the first time this country has suffered an economic disaster, throwing millions of people out of work. The last time was the Great Depression, which like the current economic disaster started with a stock market crash caused by Republican policies that favored the rich over everyone else. But the voters of that time knew what to do. They booted out the party (Republicans) that caused the economic mess and replaced them with huge Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic president.

And President Roosevelt knew there was only one way out of that mess. Government spending to create jobs and spur the economy. And spend he did (on the CCC, the TVA, the NRA, etc.). The Republicans howled that it wouldn't work -- that he was just creating a massive debt that could never be paid off. But it did work, and the debt created got paid off with taxes from the income of the new jobs. It should have been a lesson remembered for generations -- that a recession/depression requires government spending, not austerity.

But Americans have short memories, and fail to learn from the mistakes of the past. After a few decades of prosperity, they let the Republican go back to the same policies that caused the great depression -- and it had the same result as before, the current Great Recession. But the Republicans had learned a few tricks since the last time. Knowing they could not win the economic argument, they diverted the attention of voters with an array of side issues (gay marriage, war on terror, evolution, abortion, contraception, immigration, etc.). While some of these may be legitimate issues -- they are not the most serious issue facing the country, which is our jobless economic disaster.

These issues have allowed the Republicans to keep just enough power to block all Democratic efforts to create jobs and spend to spur the economy. And their excuse for blocking action to fix the economy is the same as they proposed in the 1930s -- that austerity is needed, not spending (exactly the opposite of the policies that brought us out of the Great Depression). And it is keeping the country mired in this economic mess.

And the crazy thing is all we have to do is look at Europe to know that austerity won't work. The European governments have bought into the austerity idea big time, and they are paying dearly for it. Many of those countries (Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic) have already slipped back into a recession and others are on the brink of it. In fact, Great Britain is having a worse time climbing out of this recession than they did the Great Depression (thanks to the austerity imposed by their Tory government).

The only reason the U.S. has not followed Europe back into a deeper recession is that we have a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate. They have been able to block the worst of the austerity measures the Republicans have tried to impose on the country.

The coming election is important to the economic health of this nation. It will decide whether we continue down the path of austerity and disaster (with the Republicans), or create jobs and spur economic growth by spending (with the Democrats).