Unproductive to panic, but if Trump is reelected, a lot of the blame will fall on the asymmetric Beltway fixation on budget deficits. This fixation hobbled the economy under Obama; then the fiscal hawks got all quiet when Trump exploded the deficit 1/ washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
Tax cuts and (some) spending increases under Trump are now almost as big as the Obama stimulus at its peak. It was badly designed stimulus, with low bang for buck, but a heck of a lot of bucks 2/
My back of the envelope math: compared with pre-tax-cut projections, the deficit is up around $300 billion, or 1 1/2 percent of GDP. Baseline GDP growth is around 2%; we got 3% in the first year after the tax cut, then a relapse to 2% in 2nd year 3/
So GDP is maybe 1% higher than it would have been without tax cuts, which is a multiplier of 0.67%; that's lousy, but positive. No mystery; but an object lesson of how damaging it is to listen to fiscal hawks, especially when they only squawk at Democrats 4/
