Austerity Policies Have Probably Cut Economic Growth in Half This Year

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

In the past, I’ve extrapolated from a variety of CBO reports to estimate the effect of austerity on the U.S. economy. Today, via Paul Krugman, I see that Macroecomic Advisors has produced a comprehensive estimate of the total effect of bad fiscal policies. Their conclusion: austerity policies since the start of 2011 have cut GDP growth by about 1 percentage point per year—and the bad news got even worse in the first two quarters of this year as the sequester kicked in. Add in additional economic contraction caused by the budget/debt ceiling crisis, and the total hit to growth in 2013 might clock in at about 1.5 percentage points.

In other words, the combined effect of past budget deals + sequester + fiscal cliff + debt ceiling crisis is probably a reduction of about half in our economic growth rate this year.

Let me repeat that: Republican austerity policies have probably cut economic growth in half this year and raised the unemployment rate by 1.4 percentage points. Heckuva job, guys.