When it's a slow news day, the folks at Fox 'News' bring on one of their economists to remind the viewers how badly things have gone under President Obama. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, and the Fox 'News' network will be spinning the results, and pretending there's still an actual contest on the Republican side. But for today, it's time for some good, old fashioned Democrat-bashing and creative math. Doocy's guest, Peter Morici, one of their go-to austerity gurus, is not terribly accurate with his statistics.
The University of Maryland economist and purveyor of clashing bow ties, is an ardent anti-Obama economist with a penchant for worthless austerity plans. His myths that it's the deficit, stupid, have been thoroughly debunked by respected and far more accurate economists like Paul Krugman. Today, he came armed with statistics that were reflective of the great recession inherited by President Obama, except he averaged in the first year of the Obama recovery to arrive at his numbers. The actual GDP statistics can be found here, and it clearly shows that the only year the growth was low was 2009, the year President Obama began trying to fix Bush's disasters. This is how Fox and Friends presented their 'facts.'
The economist lays the blame on the shoulders of Obama, and also admits Bush had a little to do with it. He can't stop harping on the debt that has been incurred mainly by GOP Administrations, because a Democrat is in the White House. Morici insists that a pro-growth plan, like that of Donald Trump's, would grow the stagnant 'Obama Economy.' Trump's plan includes insane amounts of tax cuts, for rich people just like himself.
Trump's tax plan would reduce revenue enormously, and the federal budget deficit would almost inevitably skyrocket.
Nonpartisan tax research group, the Tax Foundation, calculates that Trump's plan would cut taxes by $11.98 trillion over the course of a decade. It would lead to 11% growth in the GDP, 6.5% higher wages and 29% larger capital stock as well as 5.3 million jobs. However, it would also reduce tax revenues by $10.14 trillion, even when accounting for economic growth from increases in the supply of labor and capital.
Peter Morici is also concerned with the trade deficit caused by some of our unfavorable agreements (i.e. NAFTA), which is actually something on which we can all concur.
Doocy's guest believe that much of this trade deficit is the fault of rampant illegal immigration, which is aided and abetted by this administration. Even though statistics prove that deportations are up and the situation is not the slightest bit different from years past, he blames the Obama Administration.
Apparently, Trump's idiotic wall-building, Muslim banning nonsense is something he likely favors. Like all of Trump's proposals, he has no real plan, he just bloviates his empty promises, and Morici seems to be taking the bait.
The American Action Forum, a right-leaning policy institute based in Washington D.C., estimates that immediately and fully enforcing current immigration law, as Trump has suggested, would cost the federal government from $400 billion to $600 billion. It would shrink the labor force by 11 million workers, reduce the real GDP by $1.6 trillion and take 20 years to complete (Trump has said he could do it in 18 months).
The Lieutenant Governor of California, Gavin Newsome, nicely explains how Trump's immigration plan would decimate our country's economy and destroy families. But Morici, like the rest of the folks at Fox 'News,' will keep pretending that things will be okay under a 'President Trump.' Life will be so special if we only had a brain a Republican in the White House.
