This isn't about being a deficit spending hawk or whatnot, but being coldly analytic about the numbers. If the economy's ‘growing’ at two percent and the federal government is pumping in 12% of the GDP in borrowed money, wouldn't the actual number be a ten percent shrink in the economy?
It's the massive donkey in the room that no one seems to want to mention, lest it be recognized as a massively crashed economy that simply has not improved in four years.
I've been posting, making this same point about the GDP, for years now and nobody listens. I told a guy I work with, a libertarian type, that same thing about the true negative GDP numbers and he was so upset by what I said he had to go home the rest of the day.