Erza Klein posted on his Wonkblog on June 4, 2012:
“The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Congress gridlocks this year — if it simply gets nothing done — the economy will take a $607 billion hit in 2013 as the Bush tax cuts expire, the payroll tax cut expires and assorted spending cuts kick in. Falling off that “fiscal cliff,” they predict, will throw us back into recession.
“But it’s worse even than that: Speaker John Boehner has said he wants another debt-ceiling showdown. We’re not expected to hit the debt ceiling until February or March, and so the only scenario in which the debt ceiling matters is one in which Congress has already pushed us over the fiscal cliff. So as bad as the last debt-ceiling crisis was — and Gallup’s polling showed it did more damage to consumer confidence than the fall of Lehman Bros — this one would be worse.
“Miles Nadal, CEO of the marketing and communications firm MDC Partners, says that at a recent event with executives of more than 100 companies, the business leaders, panicked about this possibility, agreed on the best outcome for the economy: “a Republican landslide.” Why? “Because anything that breaks the logjam is positive,” he says. “The quality of the leader is less relevant than the ability to break gridlock.”
“There’s no reason to believe Romney could “break” gridlock. But there’s reason to believe he wouldn’t face it in the first place. Republicans control the House. They’re three seats from controlling the Senate — and, because this Senate election follows 2006, which was a wave election for Democrats, Republicans are defending 10 seats while Democrats are defending 23. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which Romney wins the White House and Republicans don’t control the House and Senate. On the other side, while it’s not impossible to imagine President Obama winning the White House and Democrats taking back the House, it’s unlikely.”
For Obama to retain the Presidency he is going to have to show real leadership to put America on the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice.
What we really need in this 2012 presidential election year is a national discussion on the topic of the importance of capital ownership and how we can expand the base of private capital ownership simultaneously with the creation of new capital formation, with the aim of building long-term financial security for all Americans through accumulating a viable capital estate.
We need a recognition in America that we should deliberately begin to broaden the capital ownership base in a way that is consistent with the laws of property and the Constitutional safeguards of the rights of men and women to own property and be productive.
What needs to be adjusted is the opportunity to produce, not the redistribution of income after it is produced.
The federal government should acknowledge its obligation to make productive capital ownership economically purchasable by capitalless Americans using capital credit, and substantially assume financial responsibility for the economy through establishing and supervising the implementation of an economic, labor and business policy of democratized economic power. Historically, capital has been the primary engine of industrialization. But as used has, as well, been the chief cause of the institutional deformities that have created and maintained two incompatible classes: the overcapitalized and the undercapitalized.
Obama needs to make the Capital Homestead Act (http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm) his priority.
