Truth: One huge thing missing in this presidential campaign | National Catholic Reporter

Truth: One huge thing missing in this presidential campaign | National Catholic Reporter by MSW.  MGB: Actually, James Q. Wilson found in 1990 (Political Science Quarterly, Summer Issue) that the President has a great deal of influence in shaping the macro numbers on budget policy, but Congress controls the details.  I imagine this is still the case.  I have run regressions showing that Deficit offset by Net Interest as a percentage of GDP is a rather good predictor of growth in the next year (after multipliers have taken affect), explaining between 25% and 100% of the variation.  By now, it is Obama's economy, although the biggest thing he did was not let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, which would have actually been good because it would have taken away the high end incentives to cut jobs.  Right now, when you save labor costs, investors keep 85% of the savings and give the government 15%.  Make that 75% with the government getting 25% and you are less likely to extract savings.  Make it 50% each and you are even more unlikely to cut costs.