Obama has botched the recovery

This debate comes down to whether you believe the economy is not recovering quickly because of a dramatic drop in consumer spending, or the fear that businesses have over an unsure policy future. I'm going to concede that a few businesses are uncomfortable with recent policy change. However, that does not mean the recovery has been botched. As I pointed out in the last round, to which my opponent did not respond, the problem in our economy is that spending is down by almost 1/3. As long as that is the case, the economy will not get better. In fact I have an even more awesome graph on this website: http://voices.washingtonpost.com... The first graph shows businesses are concerned not about taxes, but about sales. Indeed, the website notes that concerns about taxes are lower than they were in the 90's. Now the resolution doesn't call for me to prove to you why the economy sucks. It calls for me to prove to you Democrats have not botched the recovery. Therefore, I'm going to show you not only how my opponent is wrong about Obama's policies, but I'm also going to show you the real reason the economy has not gotten better is the Republicans in Congress. 1. My opponent claims that we can tell the Obama policies have screwed the economy because unemployment here is higher than unemployment in other places. Mind you, his data is from early 2009, a period Obama could not really have affected the economy much. But my most important response to this claim is going to be obviously unemployment would be higher here than in other places. We were the epicenter for the entire economic crash. Obviously our unemployment is going to be highest. Then my opponent goes on to criticize the stimulus bill. The awesome part about his critique is does anyone here remember getting a check in the mail? That's because you didn't. The stimulus tax cuts cut the amount the government held from your paycheck which means the tax cuts that apparently helped the economy so much were given out in weekly or bi-weekly increments over quite a while. Which means if these tax cuts helped the economy so much and they were given out over a while, why does the government spending that happened over a while not help the economy? The fact of the matter is over 500 bil dollars of the recovery package has been spent. And no, according to recovery.gov 1/3 of that was on contracts, grants, and loans…so no, the tax cuts aren't the only things affecting the economy. Then my opponent states the Obama team didn't understand what was going on in the economy, to which I state what economist did? What economist predicted this whole mess happening? It's really silly to blame the Obama administration for not being able to predict the future with regards to the economy. Then my opponent criticized the stimulus because of how much each job cost. What's interesting here is that he doesn't deny that the CBO estimates that the stimulus created between 1.4 and 3 million jobs. He merely focuses on how much each job cost, but either way the bill created jobs a fact you don't seem to by denying anymore. Then my opponent goes on to cite a study that polled a few economists on what Obama could do to help the economy. Firstly I've presented data that polled the actual businesses, and they are not saying taxes are on their mind they are saying that sales are on their mind. Secondly, only 41% of the economist polled believed government needed to give clarity on future policy, meaning that a majority of economists do not buy into this argument. a. My opponent goes on to say the insurance premiums are going up because insurance companies have to adjust to covering people under 26. This claim doesn't even make sense on the surface. Insurance companies love it when young people get added to their rolls. That's more that gets paid to them to cover the young person, and young people are the healthiest of any age group which means they don't go to the doctor and don't cost the insurance company very much money. And honestly, a small tax on the tanning industry is not really standing in the way of the economic recovery. You're also missing the point on the bankruptcy problem. Fewer people going bankrupt is not just good for the individual its good for the economy. The costs that these people would have paid will now be paid by their insurance. And as I stated last time, health care costs are not going to rise because as the industry needs more doctors, the free market will solve the problem of too much demand by creating supply. Its worth noting you also were unresponsive to my argument as to how the market would solve this problem in your last post. The 1099 regulation does not come into effect until 2012 we can have a debate about that then, but for right now common sense and my awesome numbers from above indicate it's not the problem on businesses minds. b. Once again for the financial reform bill this requirements have been required of businesses within the financial industry, see Community Reinvestment Act. c. If C&T comes into law, businesses might fire people, but so far they haven't and we have no evidence that they are worried about it. As for the BP issues, I also presented the argument that while the moratorium is in effect, BP is reimbursing people for their salaries that they have lost. Meaning the 23,000 people have not lost their jobs, and neither has there been secondary job losses. d. Your source on this particular section is even better. Nowhere in the actual article does it say businesses are worried about it, all it says is some businesses in Georgia are worried about it. How many businesses, two? The article in no way gives us any indication of how the business industry feels about this. 4. And yes, the industry can pass most costs on to consumers. Industry as a whole can, that is. If only one business passes on costs of course its going to fail. But a new tax burden that affects the entire industry will be passed onto consumers by the entire industry not giving consumers a choice to buy somewhere else. Indeed, if anyone has been botching the recovery it has in fact been the Republicans in Congress. Republicans in Congress have called for the budget to be balanced. To quote Rachel Maddow, "Government balancing the budget is what made the depression great." Indeed, Republicans have even gone so far as to block unemployment insurance for the long term unemployed as they did this June. Even though it's a pretty well known fact that unemployment benefits are particularly good at stimulating the economy because it puts money in the hands of people who are likely to spend it. http://www.cbpp.org... Indeed, what most of you don't know is that the unemployment bill in June originally started out as a jobs bill, which was intended to extend the benefits to unemployed workers, provide money to state governments so they wouldn't have to lay people off, and other provisions totaling $120 billion. Passing this bill could have helped the economy enormously. It was an attempt to fix the mistake made in 2009, which was to pass a stimulus bill that was not large enough to handle the economic problems at hand. But the GOP thinks austerity measures are more important, because they blocked the bill using the filibuster. So if anyone is to blame for the economy not recovering its not the democrats. The new policies are not concerning businesses that much, as my data shows. The democrats have been attempting to fix the real problem with the economy, which is to address the fundamental lack of demand. While the Republicans block their efforts. Obama has not botched the recovery, in fact if it weren't for him and the democrats in Congress we would probably be in a depression. The recovery has been botched by Republicans in Congress attempting to force austerity on a weak economy.