Duh!

Here's not news: economists have projected that unemployment would be a point lower, and growth two points higher were it not for tax hikes and spending cuts. The actual headline of the article is "Economists See Deficit Emphasis as Impeding Recovery." Um...duh.

Perhaps the reason this took four years to make the news is because economists were actually gathering data with which to quantify for us how we've been shooting ourselves in the foot. Perhaps the more cautious ones wanted to make sure that none of the dire predictions prophesized by deficit hawks actually came true. None of them came true. Whatever the reason, economists - whoever they are - are now comfortable saying what everyone with a basic understanding of economics has known for quite a while. Spending cuts like those in the sequester, and tax hikes - particularly of the payroll variety - have stifled economic growth.

If this comes as a surprise to you, you probably haven't been paying attention to the situation recently, like in the last three to five years. Austerity has been a bad idea since long before we tried to/began implementing it, but now we have concrete evidence, not just historical experience to prove to us that this was a bad idea. We also have Europe, still in the doldrums and probably moving in the wrong direction. But it seems as though Europe is waking up to the fact that austerity was the wrong move, have we? Is it too late to undo some of the damage done by the sequester and replace those harmful ones with productive reforms to entitlement spending?

One thing is for sure, America has spent the last four years making the wrong decisions on too many issues. We've hurt our own recovery on multiple occasions, been spineless in our approach to gun control, sat idly by while the situation in the Middle East has moved on without us (and for this we can blame the President whereas for other issues we can blame Congress, particularly its Republican members), and we are now in danger of failing to enact immigration reform.

What is Congress doing, you may ask? Well currently, the House of Representatives is engaged in its 37th, yes that's right, 37th attempt to repeal Obamacare. On top of the fact that this endeavor isn't going to be any more successful this time than it was the first 36, it underscores the fact that Republicans are really fresh out of ideas and so they're counter to the failure of austerity is to keep beating a dead horse, wasting their time and ours on a symbolic motion that is doomed for failure rather than proactively trying to fix things. Even if Republicans were able to repeal Obamacare they have no ideas of their own for fixing healthcare (except Obamacare which was their idea), so we'd be back at square one anyhow. There is a deplorable lack of accountability.

So instead of facing reality, acknowledging that austerity now is a horrible idea, correcting course, and trying to get America up and running again, our elected officials are casting their 37th symbolic vote on a fight they've already lost. No wonder they can't accept the reality that austerity is wrong, they're scarily immune to facts and data, and we're stuck with them at the helm of a ship that is off course.