Kate Higginson Critique of Lesley Williams- "CBO: ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Could Trigger Recession"

In response to Lesley Williams’ “CBO: ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Could Trigger Recession” it was a great analysis of the article, it was well written, well thought out and I enjoyed reading her thoughts on what we should do about the “fiscal cliff”.  I agreed with Lesley that we should bite the bullet and go over the cliff even though it will cause a recession within our country.  A recession now is better than continually pushing off the inevitable crash of our economy by making our country’s deficit larger.  I also agreed with the point that she made that Boles is wrong in his opinion of avoiding the fiscal cliff. 

            I did disagree with some points she made and thought she could’ve addressed a few more points.  She talks about how in class we discussed the end of the Bush Tax Cuts, but what does it really mean to be going over the fiscal cliff.  It is the automatic increase in taxes and spending cuts in the start of 2013.  I disagree also with the point she made about how the drop in GDP by .5% and the unemployment rate rising to 9% will only last a year.  I think we have a long road of recovery in front of us and this deficit is huge and we need to get ourselves out of this hole that we are in and that is going to take time.  And in the mean time our economy is going to suffer and we will be in a recession in my opinion for at least two years if not more.  There is no quick fix to this inevitable fiscal cliff that we are about to go off and our country needs to realize that.  A topic that is brought up in the article that Lesley does not really discuss is the start of negotiations between the White House and Congress and what is expected of those.  The Republicans and Democrats have been negotiating on what needs to be done and what spending needs to be cut.  The Republicans have already cut a lot of their spending and the Democrats are more hesitant.  The Republicans want to see a cut in social security, Medicare and Medicaid in order for there to be a more stable economy.  The fear is that the Democrats will not cut the spending of these programs because they do not want to put stress on the poorer people by making the rich pay more.  This is not going to help; everyone needs to pay in order to achieve a more stable and stimulated economy in my opinion.  Over all Lesley analyzed and related this article back to what we’ve learned in economics really well and I agreed with almost all of the points she made in her entry.  Really great job!