Buy Obama’s Chief of Staff a Clue

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

President Obama’s Chief of Staff Bill Daley, former bankster and Third Way board member, thinks that it is “the deficit is a serious drag on the economy.” You would think that the Tea Party Republicans had taken over the White House. Oh, wait, they have.

Mr. Daley appeared on Meet the Press with corporate shill, David Gregory

As Scarecrow at FDL points out

Apparently, the man closest to the President of the United States, and on whom the President relies for political and economy advice, does not know that the only reason the terrible unemployment numbers that may end his President’s re-election hopes are at 9.2 percent and not 11 or 12 percent or higher is because of the increased federal deficit spending of the last two years.

And the only thing that can keep unemployment from reaching higher levels in 2012 is continued federal spending, which they will cover via more deficits. If Mr. Daley’s diagnosis were translated into policy – and that seems to be what’s happening – he and his President will need new jobs in 2013.

Mr. Daley and the completely useless David Gregory totally ignore the real causes for current economic disaster:

On the debt reduction negotiations, David Gregory asked Mr. Daley what he must have thought was a gotcha now question. He showed Mr. Daley a graphic showing the increase in the total debt since Obama took office, with the debt going from $10 trillion to $14 trillion or so, and projected to rise another $2 trillion.

Then Gregory smuggly concluded, “can’t you [Mr. Daley] see the logic of those who argue that given this huge increase in the debt, it makes sense that we reduce that only with spending cuts and not tax increases?”

The correct response to a question that jaw-droppingly stupid would have been to award Gregory the Douglas Feith Award and terminate his contract with NBC. Daley may not get the allusion and couldn’t say that in any event.

But in responding, Daley couldn’t even remember to remind viewers that the bulk of that debt increase was entirely the result of the recession: fallen tax revenues and increased safety-net spending, plus the stimulus, all responding to the recession Mr. Obama inherited. Instead, he left us with the lecture on how the debt or deficit was a serious drag on the economy, so our President was really focused on that.

Scarecrow is so right that “there are no more adults in this conversation.”