Remember How The Republicans Promised Strong Growth In Return For De-Regulation And Their Tax Cuts For The Rich? That Was All Bullshit

Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce-- failure

Wednesday we asked candidates what issues voters wanted to talk about out in the hustings. None them mention Putin-Gate and not even Trump was topping anyone's list. They wanted to discuss bread-and-butter issues that impact them and their families.

• Audrey Denney (CA-01)- "Rural healthcare, forest health and fire prevention, and protecting Social Security are of major concern. We talk a lot about Career and Technical Education as a path to better lives and better jobs for many people. I’m often asked about solutions to our challenging infrastructure issues-- dangerous rural roads and rural broadband. There are large swaths of my district where people don’t have cell phone or internet access."
• Eva Putzova (AZ-01)- "Two issues tend to rise to the top-- healthcare and climate change."
• Kara Eastman (NE-02)- "Healthcare-- rising premiums and having to choose between medical care and putting food on the table. Education and student debt is also a big topic at the doors. In general, people tell me they are looking for someone who will stand up to the corruption they see in our current system. They are looking for someone to bring government back to the people."
• Mike Siegel (TX-10)- "On the Houston side of the district, in towns like Cypress and Katy that were hard-hit by Hurricane Harvey, a big concern is that the federal government has bungled the disaster relief program... In more rural areas, like Waller County, the concerns range from needing good jobs to needing the Postal Service to assign a zip code."
• Shahid Buttar (CA-12)- "Here in San Francisco, I hear every day from residents concerned about healthcare costs, crushing student debt, climate insecurity (so severe that many would be parents are foregoing building families), and housing insecurity. Medical bankruptcy is one of the leading causes of homelessness. And even middle class Americans are increasingly precarious. Our Kleptocrat-in-Chief is a dumpster fire, but ultimately a distraction from the hard work necessary to build the consensus for a bold vision to bravely meet the needs of the future rather than bury our heads in the sand."

Tom Suozzi (D-NY), a member of the economically and fiscally pivotal House Ways and Means Committee, represents a Long Island swing district that spans the North Shore from Sunken Meadow State Park in Suffolk, clear across Nassau into Queens, where his district and AOC's district share the Whitestone Expressway as a boundary. This morning he told me that people he speaks with "are worried about their futures. Wages are stagnant since the 1970’s. Prescription drug and healthcare costs have soared. Retirements are insecure. The middle class is shrinking and most parents are worried that their children won’t do as well as they did. The 2020 election is more about the middle classes’ economic future than about Donald Trump's tweets, his indiscretions and Russia. Those are important issues, but Americans want to know who is going to feel their very real pain and do something about it. Most don’t have the time or inclination to hear about much of anything else. Democrats need to remember that."

Many of the incumbents I speak with are really into investigating Trump and impeaching him. "That's not at the top of the list for most of my voters," one admitted to me. "Oh, they want to see Trump gone, but they're more concerned about Medicare-For-All now and suddenly everyone is asking me about the Green New Deal... People never used to talk about free state colleges. Now I'm hearing that all the time. Some of the activist freshmen, like AOC have moved the narrative along very quickly. I worry that not all of my colleagues have what it takes to keep up with her. But they better start working on it."

2020 is going to be a good year for Democrats... or, more precisely, a bad year for Republicans, worse than last year was. Trump is going to be on the top of the ticket-- and failed Republican policies are going to be on the top of voters' minds. Thursday, John Harwood, reporting for CNBC warned that voters are starting to notice that Republican promises to grow the economy better than Obama did was just more Trump bullshit. Trump's economic lies all came crashing down yesterday, demonstrating "the hollowness of a core GOP campaign theme."

Throughout the 2016 campaign and since, the president and his party have vowed to kick-start tepid Obama-era economic growth. Specifically, they insisted tax cuts and deregulation would return growth to its post-World War II average of 3 percent-- a level, candidate Trump said derisively, that President Barack Obama became "the first president in modern history" never to reach in a single year.

New government data on Thursday morning show that Trump, too, has failed to reach the 3 percent promised land, according to one major metric. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis measured 2018 growth at 2.9 percent, matching the peak Obama enjoyed in 2015.

Instead of annual 2018 growth, the White House emphasized a different growth measure comparing growth from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018.

By that measure, the economy grew 3.1 percent. But Obama, too, reached 3 percent growth on a four-quarter basis four different times.

Where Obama failed to enjoy 3 percent annual growth was on the BEA's official annual number. His 2015 peak was 2.9 percent, like Trump's for 2018. Thursday's preliminary 2.9 percent figure could later be revised, although economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics said the most likely direction would be down.

For the rest of the president's term, economic forecasters agree, that number will decline.

"2018 will be the high-water mark for growth in the Trump administration," Zandi predicted. He expects the decade-old economic expansion will shrink to 1.1 percent growth in 2020, with a better-than-even chance of recession.

...Growth ticked up in 2017 to 2.2 percent, though that rate fell below what the Congressional Budget Office had forecast before Trump's election. As the president took steps toward deregulation, Republican allies in Congress called tax cuts critical to achieving their 3 percent goal.

The tax cuts passed in December 2017. And when growth surged to 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, the White House declared victory.

"We're on track to reach the highest annualized growth in 13 years," the president assured reporters.

"Remember when Obama said you need a magic wand to make that happen?" Donald Trump Jr. told Breitbart. "Well 'abracadabra,' Obama. We're doing it."

In fact, growth in a single quarter had topped 4.2 percent four different times during the Obama administration. A broad range of analysts had forecast that a deficit-financed tax-cut would stimulate short-term boost beginning in 2018.

Yet even as 3rd quarter growth slowed to 3.4 percent, White House advisers reiterated their confidence. In July, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin called the U.S. "well on the path" for four to five years of sustained 3 percent growth.

In December, top White House economist Kevin Hassett sounded the same note while acknowledging a slowdown in business investment. "We're definitely going to be at 3 or above 3" for both 2018 and 2019, he told CNBC.

Thursday's BEA data show otherwise. Growth kept falling in the fourth quarter, to 2.6 percent. The increase in business investment has continued to taper.

Having predicted growth of "substantially over 3 percent," former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, has blamed Trump's trade tariffs for offsetting the boost from the tax cut. But the White House and its allies lacked credible evidence for their growth claim to begin with.

"The 3 percent long-term projection was always a stretch in light of the demographic headwinds," Harvard's Greg Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers for President Bush, told CNBC.

...[E]conomists at CBO and the Federal Reserve have cut their forecasts for 2019 growth to 2.3 percent. For the long-term, both project growth below 2 percent.

The "Joe" who penned this report refers to Joe Weisenthal, market analyst and Bloomberg TV host. It's worth reading, because he's picking up on a trend that's just beginning and will grow: