Picking up on an argument made by economist Mark Zandi — whom the Washington Post described as “an architect of the 2009 stimulus package” and who last year pushed for a second stimulus bill — ABC’s Christiane Amanpour on Sunday morning, presuming there is an ongoing “recovery,” plugged a This Week roundtable topic: Up next, Washington's answer to the job crisis. Will the deep budget cuts on the table stick a fork in the recovery? In the subsequent segment, Amanpour forwarded: “$61 billion in budget cuts. Mark Zandi says 700,000 jobs will be lost.” Panelist Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Thomson-Reuters, agreed: “I think he's right.” Echoing Amanpour’s theme, over on Meet the Press NBC’s David Gregory cited a poll to show “people want that focus on immediate job creation,” not budget cuts, “and that gets the President's point, which is you've got to get the balance right. You can't grow if you keep cutting so much.” “Cutting so much”? How about actually “cutting” anything. The current proposed $60 billion cut is less than ten percent of the additional “stimulus” spending. Pseudo-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks disjointedly agreed with Gregory and Obama: “Yeah, you've got to have some priorities. I'm not sure they've gotten there. For example, you can say we're going to cut, but we're not going to cut things that invest in our future. We're going to cut things that are consumption….” From the Sunday, March 6 This Week on ABC, which only very briefly addressed the topic Amanpour plugged in the roundtable with ABC’s David Muir, Mort Zuckerman, Leo Gerard, President of U.S. Steelworkers, and Freeland: AMANPOUR: $61 billion in budget cuts. Mark Zandi says 700,000 jobs will be lost. CHRYSTIA FREELAND: I think he's right. I mean I think that the problem is the U.S. government, at both the federal and the state level, needs to figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time. So what you need to is find way, in the medium term, to have a full, a solid promise to the markets we are going to deal with essentially the health care problem and in the short term stimulate jobs.
Picking up on an argument made by economist Mark Zandi — whom the Washington Post described as “an architect of the 2009 stimulus package” and who last year pushed for a second stimulus bill — ABC’s Christiane Amanpour on Sunday morning, presuming there is an ongoing “recovery,” plugged a This Week roundtable topic: Up next, Washington's answer to the job crisis. Will the deep budget cuts on the table stick a fork in the recovery? In the subsequent segment, Amanpour forwarded: “$61 billion in budget cuts. Mark Zandi says 700,000 jobs will be lost.” Panelist Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Thomson-Reuters, agreed: “I think he's right.” Echoing Amanpour’s theme, over on Meet the Press NBC’s David Gregory cited a poll to show “people want that focus on immediate job creation,” not budget cuts, “and that gets the President's point, which is you've got to get the balance right. You can't grow if you keep cutting so much.” “Cutting so much”? How about actually “cutting” anything. The current proposed $60 billion cut is less than ten percent of the additional “stimulus” spending. Pseudo-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks disjointedly agreed with Gregory and Obama: “Yeah, you've got to have some priorities. I'm not sure they've gotten there. For example, you can say we're going to cut, but we're not going to cut things that invest in our future. We're going to cut things that are consumption….” From the Sunday, March 6 This Week on ABC, which only very briefly addressed the topic Amanpour plugged in the roundtable with ABC’s David Muir, Mort Zuckerman, Leo Gerard, President of U.S. Steelworkers, and Freeland: AMANPOUR: $61 billion in budget cuts. Mark Zandi says 700,000 jobs will be lost. CHRYSTIA FREELAND: I think he's right. I mean I think that the problem is the U.S. government, at both the federal and the state level, needs to figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time. So what you need to is find way, in the medium term, to have a full, a solid promise to the markets we are going to deal with essentially the health care problem and in the short term stimulate jobs.