Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics Simple Fact: Republicans Can't Manage the Economy

By JOHN W. DEAN

Feb. 08, 2008

Our country's best and brightest economists have, for over a decade now, been traveling the land to warn of the coming economic crisis. Championing this cause are a number of former government officials, both Republicans and Democrats, who have gathered at the Concord Coalition. Former senators Sam Nunn and Warren Rudman, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Secretary of the Treasury (during the Clinton Administration) Bob Rubin, and former Secretary of Commerce (during the Nixon Administration) Peter Peterson together constitute the bipartisan coalition.
Peterson, a founding partner in the Blackstone Group, which manages some $80 billion dollars for investors, started the Concord Coalition in 1992. He knows his way around the economy, and since the Reagan and Bush I years, he has been expressing his concern about the way Republicans have handled it.

Fiscal responsibility, however, is no longer the guiding conviction of Republican leaders. For the last quarter century, since Ronald Reagan arrived in the White House, Peterson writes, Republican leaders have been oblivious to the devastation that deficits bring. "Deficits have become like aspirin," he explains of their thinking, "a sort of fiscal wonder drug. We should take them regularly just to stay healthy and take lots of them whenever we're feeling out of sorts." (Peterson doesn't say it, but while aspirin is not lethal, it can be deadly when you are bleeding badly, as is our economy.)