“The fiscal cliff would drive the U.S. economy back into recession next year...”
Stopped reading right there; the recession never left.
I don’t think I’d classify this as a recession episode.
You end up with 120k people in the DC area who will be let go...who all tend to make $70k or more....with no other industry within 100 miles that would ever offer them another job. A second wave of people...from the service industry in DC...probably around 20k...would lose their jobs in the months after the first wave.
Foreclosures and dumped cars would be the norm within six months. Property values would drop. Bankruptcies would jump by thirty percent in the local area easily.
I should add...that only covers the DC region. This would be a giant wave across the US. Figure at least 250k gov’t workers would eventually be dumped. No industry or business operation is going to pick these guys up.
If you wanted a 1930’s style depression...this would be the most practical way of accomplishing that.
I will offer this observation...there are various ways to cut the budget and start to do a yearly five-percent cut on personnel for four years. You could force early retirement onto a quarter of the candidates very easily. You could shutdown fifty national parks within thirty days and just declare them closed to the public, or offer them to states who want to pay and maintain them.
There are smart ways of handing budget cuts. So far, I haven’t’ seen any idiot on TV willing to explain them in public. I think most people want to just keep going with everything intact.
All Boehner and every Republican in Congress has to say is:
We Republicans are willing to return to the Clinton Tax Rates if we also return to the Clinton Spending Rates.
For God's sake, Republicans, get some talking points and keep repeating them over and over.
That's what the Democrats do and it works.