A Pet Peeve of Mine on the Budget Deficit

     So I'm at Krugman reading his post about Romer. He thins that Romer is on the wrong track in ascribing the Chicago School's insularity to Robert Solow once laughing at Robert Lucas.

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/trash-talk-and-the-macroeconomic-divide/#commentsContainer

    However, the commentator Len Charlap left this comment that drives me up the wall:

   " Why is US economic growth since the Great Recession so weak?"

   "Because the Obama administration (with the connivance of Congress) has cut the federal deficit by more than half. The deficit measures the net flow of money from the federal sector (which has an infinite supply) to the private sector which needs more and more money as the economy grows. This is especially true after a financial crash."

   We'll see if the Times publishes me but this was my response to Mr. Charlap:

   "This is a pet peeve of mine. .Why do you have to say Obama did it? There is this Green Lantern Theory that the President is omni powerful over the economy. The President tried to do more job programs and got scorched earth opposition. Do people really not know that Congress and not the President write the budget?"

   He makes it sound like this was Obama'w wish. Is there anyway he could have avoided the deficit being cut with the Tea Party Congress?

  By the way, he and other Democrats have now talked about no longer targeting a balanced budget which is a very important change from the consensus since the 90s.

   I notice this same Green Lanternism on Rush Limbaugh's show-not that this is a surprise. Rush keeps going on about how no Republicans-not just Trump-shouldn't have been criticized on Fox the other night because the economy is a mess and it's all because of Obama and the Democrats.

  These are their politics that have led us to this mess. This claim of Rush's only makes sense if you subscribe to the Green Lantern Theory of the economy where the President is all-powerful. If not then you'd at least have to admit that the GOP has run Congress since 2010. 

  I mean look at Scott Walker, He's the Governor of Wisconsin which as Trump says is doing terrible. 

 http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/donald-trump-on-scott-walker-wisconsins.html

 So Rush believes that the President is all powerful over the economy but that Walker has no power over his own state? It must be nice to be this innocent of the facts.