The Failure Caucus: A Good Name

I'm back with another Moneybox column by Daniel Gross from Slate. In this column, Gross identifies a number of groups he designates as part of the "failure caucus." It is hard to believe that any Americans, especially those sworn to public service, would be so cynical, and so hard-hearted, as to want to delay economic recovery, simply in order to paint the administration as a failure.

Here's the key paragraph on the political front: "That risk is highest for the political division of the Failure Caucus. The conventional wisdom on the right holds that President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are setting themselves up for a big fall through their overreaching. But I'd argue that it's the Republican Party, which was always on the side of greater growth, higher stock prices, and more wealth, that has painted itself into a corner. Many Republicans opposed the initial bailouts because they were conducted by an unpopular Republican president in conjunction with a Democratic Congress. (In Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair article, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson conspicuously praises congressional Democrats and conspicuously says little about congressional Republicans.) Then they doubled down with virtually uniform opposition to the Obama stimulus bill, which had been watered down to attract Republican votes. In order for Republicans to be vindicated politically, the bailouts and the stimulus—and the economy at large—must fail. Thus considered, every positive data point, every sign of stabilization in the housing market, every rise in the S&P 500, every TARP repayment, is something of a rebuke. As the clouds part, the historic party of economic sunshine is in the strange position of praying for rain."

I think "failure caucus" is a good name for these self-interested prophets of doom, and I think it particularly appropriate that a picture of John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, is at the top of Gross's column.