US policies ‘disaster’ for middle class

The economic policies of the United States during the last two decades have been an “unmitigated disaster” for middle class working Americans, a political commentator in Phoenix says.   

The federal government has attempted to “mask” the economic troubles by “printing massive amounts of money,” instead of changing the failed polices to “cure the underlying structural problems within the US economy,” said Mike Harris, financial editor at Veterans Today.

Harris argued that the US government has made some terrible mistakes that have contributed to the current economic crisis, including signing over a dozen free trade agreements, which resulted in the outsourcing of US manufacturing.

He also said “non-enforcement of immigration laws” has further complicated the situation by creating “competition” between American workers and millions of undocumented immigrants who are willing to work for less compensation.

“There has been some recent job creation but the jobs that are created are paying 25 percent to 35 percent less than the jobs that were lost,” Harris added.

Unless the federal government changes these polices, the analyst said, “we are going to have another decade of tepid growth if any growth in this country and this may end up to be a very protracted time of economic stagnation and shrinkage within the US economy.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday raised its estimate for this year’s federal deficit to $506 billion, while slashing its growth forecast for the US economy.

The new estimate is $14 billion more than the budget office’s last report in April which had projected the deficit for fiscal 2014 to hit $492 billion on September 30. The US government’s fiscal year runs from October through September.

The new estimate is largely a result of lower-than-expected revenues for the year, in part because receipts from corporate income taxes are $37 billion less than expected.

The CBO said that over the long term, “the large and increasing amount of federal debt would have serious negative consequences” including the risk of a crisis that could raise interest rates.

AHT/HRJ