Spending DA (Someone Fix This)

George Mason 2012-13
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Spending DA GMU
Spending DA GMU......................................................................................... 1
*** Shell........................................................................................................... 3
Spending DA 1NC.......................................................................................... 4
*** Uniqueness Debate.................................................................................... 7
UQ Econ High................................................................................................. 8
UQ Econ High Stocks................................................................................. 11
UQ Brink...................................................................................................... 12
UQ No Deficit Spending Now.......................................................................13
UQ No Spending Now...................................................................................14
UQ Deficit Decreasing Now..........................................................................15
*** Link Debate.............................................................................................. 17
Link Cuba BizCon...................................................................................... 18
Link EE Generic......................................................................................... 20
Link EE Pork Barrel.................................................................................... 21
Link Energy Deficit $.................................................................................22
Link FA Deficit $........................................................................................ 23
Link Trade Deficit $................................................................................... 24
*** Internal Link Debate.................................................................................26
IL Deficit Spending....................................................................................... 27
IL Pork Barrel............................................................................................... 30
IL AT: Keynesian Good.................................................................................. 32
*** Impact Debate.......................................................................................... 37
MPX War...................................................................................................... 38
MPX AT: US Not K2 Global ECON..................................................................39
MPX Poverty................................................................................................. 41
*** AFF Answers............................................................................................. 43
NU Economy Low......................................................................................... 44
NU Spending Low......................................................................................... 45
AC QE.......................................................................................................... 46
Keynes Good.................................................................................................. 47
No Link FA.................................................................................................... 50
AT: Biz Con..................................................................................................... 51
AT: Impact ECON Decline Doesnt => War...................................................52
AT: Impact ECON Resilient........................................................................... 53
Turn War...................................................................................................... 54
Turn Trade Bad............................................................................................. 56

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*** Shell

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Spending DA 1NC
Uniqueness the economy is recovering, but its on the
brink people are still adjusting to Fed policy
Hwang, reporter for Bloomberg, 6/25, 2013, (Inyoung, U.S. Stocks
Rebound From Nine-Week Low on Economic Data, Bloomberg,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/u-s-stock-futures-gainindicating-s-p-500-rebound.html, MWH)
U.S. stocks rose, as the Standard & Poors 500 Index (SPX)
rebounded from a nine-week low, after data showed durable-good
orders and home sales increased more than forecast and consumer
confidence climbed. PulteGroup Inc. (PHM) rallied 3.9 percent as an index
of homebuilders jumped 1.1 percent. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of
America Corp. gained at least 2.3 percent as financial companies advanced.
Walgreen Co. sank 5.9 percent after posting quarterly profit that missed
estimates. Netflix Inc. (NFLX) slid 1.3 percent after Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
cut its rating on the company to underperform. The S&P 500 climbed 1
percent to 1,588.03 in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose
100.75 points, or 0.7 percent, to 14,760.31 today. People are still
digesting the news from the Fed, making mental adjustments for
different levels of interest rates and what those might imply for
securities prices over the next several quarters, John Carey, a fund
manager at Boston-based Pioneer Investment Management Inc., said by
telephone. His firm oversees about $208 billion. Im encouraged the
market has stabilized a little here. U.S. equities climbed today as the
Conference Boards index of U.S. consumer confidence increased to
81.4 in June from 74.3 a month earlier. Another report showed bookings
for U.S. goods meant to last at least three years climbed 3.6 percent
for a second month, topping economist forecasts. Separate data showed
sales of new U.S. homes climbed more than forecast in May to the
highest level in almost five years, while home prices increased more than
forecast in the 12 months through April.
Link Economic engagement involves spending

Helen V Milner and Dustin H Tingley- 2011
(Who Supports Global Economic Engagement? The Sources of Preferences in

American Foreign Economic Policy, Pg 49,
http://www.princeton.edu/~hmilner/forthcoming%20papers/MilnerTingley
%20(2011)%20Who%20Supports%20Global%20Economic%20) S

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For foreign aid, the president also needs congressional approval since this
involves taxing and spending+ Congress must agree to the presidents
proposals to appropriate and then allocate funds for foreign aid each year+
Unlike in trade, aid appropriations are usually part of a much larger
foreign operations bill, which contains spending for all forms of
international activity in the federal government+ House committees amend
the presidents proposals and then these bills may face amendments on the
House floor+ We focus on these amendments since they give a clearer
picture of preferences for aid alone
C. Impact Deficit spending causes economic decline

Rob Nichols- 2013 -the president and chief operating officer of the Financial
Services Forum- (Financial Services Forum, American Banker,
http://www.financialservicesforum.org/index.php) S
Given current Congressional Budget Office projections, there is reason to
conclude that, unless significant structural changes are made to
balance revenues with spending, the U.S. will probably approach a
point where global market sentiment regarding the nation's fiscal
condition could change abruptly for the worse. This would make
corrective action far more urgent and painful than if such steps were taken in
the near term. Failure to meaningfully address the nation's fiscal
circumstances raises the prospect of dangers that could hurt the
U.S. economy. Principal among these is the risk that investors could
demand higher risk premiums when buying U.S. government debt. At the
current elevated debt tally, rising interest rates could quickly compound an
already challenging fiscal situation. Moreover, given that Treasury bills and
bonds are the basis for borrowing structures in private credit markets, the
effect of burgeoning government debt on the cost of capital, economic
growth and job creation would be far-reaching and decidedly negative.
Given the probable impact of higher rates on U.S. economic prospects,
another risk associated with further deterioration in the nation's debt position
is that investors may sour on dollar-denominated assets. The dollar's
relative value would fall, undermining Americans' purchasing power
and standard of living. A falling dollar also has dangerous implications for
inflation. Finally, further deterioration in the nation's debt position would
probably be associated with greater financial market instability. The
threshold beyond which investors would demand higher real yields for
holding U.S. debt, or flee from dollar-denominated assets, is not obvious. This
inherent uncertainty has tended to make fiscal discipline seem less urgent, or
easier to postpone. Research by Ken Rogoff of Harvard and Carmen Reinhart
of the University of Maryland reveals that, throughout history, in advanced
and emerging nations alike, debt-to-GDP levels surpassing 90% are strongly
associated with notably slower economic growth, more frequent and severe
financial crises, higher inflation and overall economic decline. America's debtto-GDP ratio is expected to surpass 90% this year. Some analysts argue that
the United States' position in the global economy is unique and, therefore,

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conventional debt metrics that might signal trouble for other countries simply
do not apply. It is true that the U.S. still enjoys a favored position in the
global economy, but it is not immune to economic decline. The
trajectories of former historical powers make clear that failure to
achieve fiscal sustainability increases the risk of financial instability.
Unless we as a nation make a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in
the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy
economic growth.
Economic collapse causes global nuclear war.

Merlini, Senior Fellow Brookings, 11
[Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States
and Europe and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Italian Institute for
International Affairs (IAI) in Rome. He served as IAI president from 1979 to
2001. Until 2009, he also occupied the position of executive vice chairman of
the Council for the United States and Italy, which he co-founded in 1983. His
areas of expertise include transatlantic relations, European integration and
nuclear non-proliferation, with particular focus on nuclear science and
technology. A Post-Secular World? DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2011.571015
Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request Permissions Published in: journal
Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2 April 2011 , pages 117 - 130 Publication
Frequency: 6 issues per year Download PDF Download PDF (~357 KB)
View
Related Articles To cite this Article: Merlini, Cesare 'A Post-Secular World?',
Survival, 53:2, 117 130]
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities,
albeit at the risk of oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the postWestphalian system. One or more of the acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and
traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the use of nuclear weapons. The crisis
might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial system, the vulnerability of
which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great Depression, with consequences
for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of
national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be
amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the
European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and
Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to
immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated.
One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic
absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.

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*** Uniqueness Debate

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UQ Econ High
U.S. stocks breaking more records- the economy is doing
well
Dieterich, 7-11, 2013,
(Chris, Covering stocks and ETFs for The Wall Street Journal in New York,
Stocks Surge Into Record Terrain, Wall Street Journal, JH,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732442520457859917282277
6806.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection)
Signals that the Federal Reserve will keep its easy-money policies in
place for the long haul energized investors across the globe and sent
U.S. stock indexes soaring to all-time highs. The spark came from Fed
Chairman Ben Bernanke, who said late Wednesday that the economy still
needs "highly accommodative monetary policy for the foreseeable future."
U.S. stock futures bolted higher after Wednesday's closing bell,
triggering overnight advances in Asia and Europe and ultimately big
gains on Wall Street Thursday. Mr. Bernanke's comments also prompted a
selloff in the dollar, a decline in Treasury yields and a rise in gold prices. Both
the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor's 500-stock
index closed at records. The blue chips climbed 169.26 points, or
1.1%, to 15460.92.
US economy increasing steadily- markets and investors

driving it up
Rudarakanchana, 7-10, 2013,
(Nat, US Economic Snapshot: Its all Good When It Comes To Executive
Expectations, CEO Confidence And Salary Increases, International Business
Times, JH, http://www.ibtimes.com/us-economic-snapshot-its-all-good-when-itcomes-executive-expectations-ceo-confidence-salary-1340391#)
The economy, executives and markets in the United States augur
steady improvements in the nation's economy over the coming six
months, according to a trio of reports released on Wednesday. About 40
percent of business executives surveyed hailed North America as a
top market for corporate mergers and acquisitions in 2013, according
to a Deloitte LLP report. And almost 70 percent of those executives
expect the U.S. economy to continue its gradual improvements
throughout this year, the report notes. Deloitte polled more than 1,800
professionals in an online May 2013 poll. Meanwhile, confidence among
CEOs saw boosts for the third consecutive quarter, with 60 percent of
respondents perceiving better economic conditions than six months

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ago, according to nonprofit business association the Conference Board.
Thats up from 36 percent in the previous quarter.
The economy is up- producer prices and the labor market

are driving it up
Reuters, 7-12, 2013,
(U.S. producer prices rise, give positive economic signal, Reuters, JH,
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/internationalbusiness/us-business/us-producer-prices-rise-could-signal-strongereconomy/article13188500/
the pace of
hiring has held at relatively robust levels and most economists
expect growth will rebound later in the year. The data sends a
reassuring signal that demand is still strong enough to push prices
higher. While much of the increase in prices was fuelled by a jump in gasoline which could weigh on consumers, a gauge of
underlying inflation pressures pointed to a little more vigor in the
economy. So-called core producer prices, which strip out volatile energy and food costs, rose 0.2
per cent last month, boosted by a 0.8 per cent increase in the price of passenger cars. Economists had
expected core prices to rise 0.1 per cent. Core prices at the wholesale level rose 1.7 per cent in
the 12 months through June, matching the gain in the previous month. Economists had expected a weaker 12-month rise. Firmer core
inflation could be good news for the economy as it may signal firming
consumer demand.
While federal budget cuts and higher taxes appeared to slow U.S. economic growth sharply in the April-June period,
US labor market growing faster than expected, spurring

overall economic growth and confidence
Huffington Post, 7-5, 2013,
(June Jobs Report: U.S. Economy Adds 195,000 Jobs; Unemployment Rate
Unchanged, Huffington Post, JH,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/05/june-jobs-report-unemploymentrate_n_3549873.html
U.S. employers added 195,000 jobs in June and hiring was more
robust in the two previous months than earlier estimated. The gains raise
hopes for a stronger economy in the second half of 2013 . The Labor Department
said Friday that the economy also added 20,000 more jobs in May and 50,000
more in April than initially reported. The unemployment rate stayed at 7.6 percent, but for a good
reason: More people started looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they are searching for jobs .
Americans' paychecks rose at a healthy pace and have outpaced
inflation in the past year. Average hourly pay increased 10 cents to
$24.01. That's 2.2 percent higher than a year ago. Over the 12 months ending in May, consumer
prices rose 1.4 percent. Stock index futures rose shortly after the report was released at 8:30 a.m. EDT. And the yield on the
10-year Treasury note jumped from 2.56 percent to 2.65 percent, a
sign that investors think the economy is improving.
10

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US stocks set to make record highs again- the economys

up
Jarzemsky, 7-12, 2013,
(Matt, Stocks Pause After Rally, Wall Street Journal, JH,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732487950457860125154732
8608.html)
the Dow
climbed 169 points to surpass the all-time high it had set in May . The
Standard & Poor's 500-stock index edged down one point, or 0.1%, to 1674. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained five points, or U.S.
stocks are on pace to post their third-straight weekly advance , helped in
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tacked on nine points, or 0.1%, to 15472 in the minutes after the opening bell. Thursday,
recent days by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke saying monetary policy would remain "highly accommodative" for the foreseeable
future. Concerns about a potential scaling back on stimulus measures later this year, by way of reduced bond purchases, have prompted
choppy trading since mid-May.
The stock markets up all round- many factors

NASDAQ, 7-10, 2013,
(Internet Stocks Help Broad U.S Stock Market Gains, NASDAQ.com, JH,
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/internet-stocks-help-broad-market-gains-oilservice-sector-and-small-cap-stocks-among-leaders-cm258571
The recent sell-off in U.S. equities was reversed during the week-over-week
period. Positive economic data has helped bring the U.S. stock
market to within striking distance of all-time highs. The NASDAQ US
1500 INDEX rose 2.8%. "The risk-on trade seems to be back as investors
have put worries about Fed tapering aside. The U.S. looks particularly
attractive compared to other markets lately as Chinas growth
seems to be slowing, said Dave Gedeon, Managing Director, NASDAQ
OMX Global Indexes. Crude oil and energy stocks have been helped by
U.S. economic data and the turmoil in Egypt. INDEX MOVES THIS
WEEK The NASDAQ Internet Index (QNET) rose 3.1% on the strong price
performance of a number of U.S. large cap internet stocks. Smaller
cap stocks represented by the broad NASDAQ 1500 Index (NQUSS1500) also
rose 2.8%.
Economy is improving stock market proves

Hwang, reporter for Bloomberg, 6/25, 2013,
(Inyoung, U.S. Stocks Rebound From Nine-Week Low on Economic Data,

Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/u-s-stock-futuresgain-indicating-s-p-500-rebound.html, MWH)
All 10 groups in the S&P 500 rose today, with financial stocks rising
1.9 percent for the second-largest gain. JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank
by assets, added 2.3 percent to $52.08. Bank of America, the second-biggest,
gained 3 percent to $12.67 for the best performance in the Dow. Railroads,
Airlines Investors bought shares of stocks most tied to economic
growth, sending the Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index up 1.4 percent.
The Dow Jones Transportation Average (TRAN) rose 1.9 percent, as all
11

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of the 20 railroads, shipping companies and airlines in the gauge advanced.
Carnival Corp. rallied 5 percent to $34.89. The cruise operator that had a
series of mishaps at sea this year reported fiscal second-quarter profit that
topped analysts estimates. The company also said Micky Arison will step
down as chief executive officer after 34 years as it splits the CEO and
chairman roles. Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) rose 3.6 percent to $34.98
after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boosted the worlds biggest
independent refiner to neutral from sell.
Even if the US economy is shaky, its doing well compared

to the rest of the world
Lee and Puzzanghera, 7-9, 2013,
(Don, writer for Chicago Tribune, Jim, writer for Chicago Tribune, IMF lowers
U.S. and global economic growth forecasts, Chicago Tribune,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-imf-world-economy20130710,0,5885679.story, MWH)
And the nation is doing much better than other advanced economies,
which as a group are expected to expand just 1.2% this year and
2.1% next year. One factor is that some developed economies, such as
Germany, rely more on exports. The U.S. economy is driven mostly
by domestic spending. "Private demand should remain solid, given
rising household wealth owing to the housing recovery and still
supportive financial conditions," the IMF said of the U.S. economy.
12

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UQ Econ High Stocks

U.S. economy increasing- stocks prove
Gibson, 7-9, (Kate, U.S. Stocks rise; S&P 500 nears record, Market
Watch, JH, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-rise-onearnings-optimism-2013-07-09
U.S. stocks climbed on Tuesday, pushing the S&P 500 to within 1% of
its all-time closing high, as Wall Street embraced an improving
economy and higher interest rates. The market is voting itself that
things are improving, with interest rates going higher without taking the stock
market down, said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist with TD Ameritrade. The S&P
500 index SPX +0.72% added 11.86 points, or 0.7%, to 1,652.32, with
materials pacing sector gains. From a technical point of view we need to
test 1,650 to go higher, Kinahan added of the level last breached three
weeks ago. The market can now make a run for the May 21 record
close of 1,669.16, he added. The benchmark indexes ran up to three-week
highs as Alcoa Inc. AA -0.13% started off earnings season, with the aluminum
manufacturer the first Dow member to report earnings for the second
quarter.
U.S. economy rising; stocks leading the way

Kiernan, 7-9, (Kaitlyn, U.S. Stocks Rise as Nasdaq Looks for
Multiyear High, Nasdaq, JH, http://www.nasdaq.com/article/usstocks-rise-as-nasdaq-looks-for-multiyear-high-20130709-00914)
Stocks rose toward session highs in late-afternoon trading Tuesday,
pushing the tech-oriented Nasdaq Composite Index toward a fresh
12-year high as earnings season got off to a decent start. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average advanced 94 points, or 0.6%, to 15318, in
afternoon trading, with Caterpillar and Cisco Systems leading gains.
The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index rose 14 points, or 0.8%, to 1654, with
industrials leading nine of 10 sectors higher. The Nasdaq Composite gained
23 points, or 0.7%, to 3508, on track to finish above its May 21 close of
3502.12, which was the highest finish since the year 2000. "We're
encouraged by the fact that technology is starting to lead, versus the
beginning of the year when it was more defensive names leading stocks
higher," said Joe Bell, senior market analyst with Schaeffer's Investment
Research
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UQ Brink
Obamas administrations policies put economy on brinkCato Institute- APRIL 19, 2013 ( At the Brink: Will Obama Push Us Over the
Edge?, CATO Institute, http://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/brink-willobama-push-us-over-edge)S
In At the Brink, economist John Lott argues that the Obama
administrations policies are destroying what has been a health care
system that has been the envy of the world. Furthermore, Obama inherited
a severe recession, but the spectacular stimulus spending with
which Obama launched his presidency not only has failed to help the
economyit has poisoned it, slowing the recovery. His positions on
regulations and taxes have also harmed the economy. But the Obama
administrations legacy isnt just going to be on health care and the economy,
Lott says. For example, another long-lasting legacy will be on peoples ability
to defend themselves with guns. The administrations appointments to the
courts, as well as federal actions and its unprecedented push for states to
adopt gun control, will reduce gun ownership and endanger lives.
The US economy is on the brink fears of Fed tapering

and sequestration
Lee and Puzzanghera, 7-9, 2013,
(Don, writer for Chicago Tribune, Jim, writer for Chicago Tribune, IMF lowers
U.S. and global economic growth forecasts, Chicago Tribune,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-imf-world-economy20130710,0,5885679.story, MWH)
"On top of that, you've got this 'taper' panic," he said of investors'
fears that the Fed will soon start unwinding its easy-money policies,
leading to higher interest rates and a flight of capital from emerging
economies as investors seek higher returns in the U.S. In the U.S.,
the IMF said the sequester's effect was likely to remain until next
year, longer than anticipated in the spring. But as the pace of the
spending cuts slows, U.S. economic growth should be able to pick up
next year, the IMF said.
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Now
No deficit spending nowALAIN SHERTER- CBS-, 5-13, 2013, (Feds U.S government is
plunging, CBS Moneywatch, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301505123_162-57584449/feds-u.s-goverment-deficit-is-plunging/)
(MoneyWatch) Lawmakers gearing up for what is shaping up as another bitter
partisan clash over the nation's borrowing limit later this year must reckon
with a new fiscal reality: The federal deficit is shrinking fast. A
Congressional Budget Office study released today forecasts that the
annual U.S. budget gap -- the difference between what the government
collects in revenue every year and what it spends -- will fall this year to
$642 billion. That's $200 billion less than the non-partisan forecasting arm of
Congress was predicting only three months ago and down sharply from the
deficit levels that swelled as the economy contracted following the housing
crash. The CBO attributed the budgetary progress to rising personal
and corporate income taxes, along with Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie
Mac (FMCC) -- the housing agencies seized by the government during the
financial crisis -- repaying part of their bailout loans from taxpayers. Tax
receipts are surging largely because the payroll taxes employees pay to fund
Social Security rose in January and because rates rose on the richest
Americans.
No deficit spending now- the government has a surplus

Lange, 7-11, 2013,
(Jason, U.S. posts unexpectedly large budget surplus for June, Reuters, JH,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/11/us-usa-economy-budgetidUSBRE96A0TU20130711)
The U.S. government posted an unexpectedly large budget surplus in
June, a further sign of the rapid improvement in public finances that has
taken the heat off Congress to find savings and raise the nation's borrowing
limit. Rising tax revenue, public spending cuts and big payments to
the Treasury from government-backed mortgage companies helped the
government take in $117 billion more last month than it paid out, the
U.S. Treasury said on Thursday. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a
surplus of $39.5 billion.
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The governments in surplus- no deficit spending

AP, 7-11, 2013,
(Government reports $116.5B surplus in June, USAToday, JH,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/11/governmentbudget-surplus-june/2509455/)
The federal government on Thursday reported a rare surplus of
$116.5 billion in June, the largest for a single month in five years. The gain
kept the U.S. on track for its lowest annual deficit in five years. The surplus
was due in part to $66.3 billion in dividend payments from Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac. The mortgage giants were taken over by the
government at the height of the 2008 financial crisis and are now
repaying taxpayers for the support they received.
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UQ No Spending Now
No new spending nowTRAVIS WALDRON- reporter for ThinkProgress at the Center for American
Progress Action Fund. Feb 12, 2013
(Three Charts That Show America Doesnt Have A Spending Problem,

ThinkProgress, http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/12/1580111/threecharts-that-show-america-doesnt-have-a-spending-problem/) S
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosis (D-CA) claim this weekend that the
government doesnt have a spending problem has been met with typical
outrage from Republican politicians (and several members of the Washington
media) who have spent the greater part of the last three years arguing that
reining in Americas supposed out-of-control government spending would put
the country on a more stable economic footing. There is, however, no basis to
those claims, as actual evidence points in the opposite direction. As this
chart from Slates Matt Yglesias shows, overall government spending has
plateaued under President Obama after rising sharply under George
W. Bush and during Obamas first year in office, when the economic
recovery act went into effect. In fact, the reduction in growth of
spending under Obama is unprecedented in the last half-century, and
government spending under Obama is growing at the slowest rate since
Dwight Eisenhower was president
17

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UQ Deficit Decreasing Now

The deficit is decreasing now
Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
and executive vice president of Bard, 13
(Dimitri, What the economy needs is even more deficit spending, Deseret
News, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765626414/What-the-economyneeds-is-even-more-deficit-spending.html?pg=all, MWH)
The deficit has arguably gained the distinction of being the single most
widely misunderstood public policy issue in America. Just 6 percent (6!) of
respondents in a recent poll correctly stated that it had been shrinking,
which has in fact been the case for several years, while 10 times more, 62
percent, wrongly believed that it's been getting bigger.
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Link Cuba BizCon

Investment in Cuba tanks business confidence its
viewed as dangerous
Rohrlich, 12 (Justin, Award-winning Head Writer of World in Review, Risky
Business: Investing in Cuba Is More Than Just a Financial Gamble,
http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/cubaemerging-markets-frontier-markets-market/6/20/2012/id/41867?refresh=1,
MWH)
Investment risk can mean a number of different things. This past fall,
British businessman Amado Fakhre took a particularly severe type of
loss: His freedom. October, 2011: Fakhre, the Lebanese-born, Havanabased CEO of Coral Capital -- which claimed to have invested $75
million in Cuba, with more than $1 billion worth of projects in the
pipeline -- is woken at dawn and arrested by Cuban authorities. Coral
Capitals offices are shuttered and declared a crime scene. Fakhre
has been held without charges ever since. April, 2012: Coral Capitals
COO Stephen Purvis, is picked up by Cuban government agents as he
prepares to walk his children to school. He too, has been held without
charges, and no mention has been made of either case in Cubas state-run
media. Before their disappearances, Fakhre and Purvis seemed to have no
shortage of confidence in Corals ventures. Were not virgins at this, Purvis
told a reporter, regarding the Bellomonte Golf Club, a 650-acre property
under development at the time of his arrest. Indeed, Purvis and Fakhre were
not beginners -- Coral Capital was formed in 1999 to invest in Cuba and
successfully restored Havanas Hotel Saratoga, where rates climb as high as
$900 per night. They also opened the islands first Land Rover dealership,
which was admittedly a work in progress (they sold a total of one car, to
themselvesbut these things take time). Coral Capital was not the only
foreign company paid back by the Cuban government with a complimentary
stay at Villa Marista, the state security torture facility that apparently also
doubles as a guesthouse. Vahe "Cy" Tokmakjian, CEO of Ontario, Canadas,
Tokmakjian Group, which sold buses, trucks, and mining equipment to Cuba
and served as Cubas exclusive distributor for Hyundai, was an experienced
Cuba hand. "I came to Cuba 21 years ago when the times of economic
trouble began and, despite my banker's advice, I considered I could trust
Cubans; so thats how I came here, why Im here now and why I will continue
to be here," he told Cuba Plus, a publication produced by Vancouvers Taina
Communications in partnership with the Cuban government. To be sure,
Tokmakjian, whose company did an estimated $80 million worth of business
with the island annually, continues to live in Cuba -- held without charges
since September 2011, when he was taken into custody by state security and
his company closed. (A second Canadian, Tri-Star Caribbean CEO Sarkis
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Yacoubian, has been held by the Cuban government without charges for
almost a year.) What Happened? As Fakhre, Purvis, et al (over the past two
years, Cuba has sent 52 foreigners, as well as hundreds of Cuban
ministers and officials to jail, and has expelled more than 150
foreign business owners and operators) have now discovered, part of
the reform process appears to include President Raul Castro making good on
a 2008 vow to root out the rampant corruption that has been a part of daily
life for decades. A noble goal, hampered by the fact that no clear definition
exists of what, exactly, constitutes corruption. A centrally-controlled
command economy such as Cubas, with a near-total lack of
transparency, ensures that every act is fraught for anybody trying
to exist, from businesspeople to the average Joe, says a diplomatic
official who agreed to speak to me anonymously. The Cubans have very
publicly made examples of what they perceive to be corruption
issues, the source explains. One of those, in an interesting reversal of
the norm, is what might be referred to as a maximum wage law,
which reportedly hovers around $20 per month. According to the Economist,
Raul Castro considers letting foreign firms pay market wages a step too far,
forcing companies to break the law -- and run afoul of his newfound efforts
to enforce it. We are somewhat in the dark here, said a European
businessman based in Havana. If I pay my manager an extra $100 a
month, as I feel I should, is that a crime against national security?
The answer is, in a Communist country, yes. Money is power, and the
inevitable income disparities that result from capitalistic concepts
like bonuses collapse the order of a classless society. Heres former
UK Ambassador to North Korea, John Everard: The regimes distaste for
markets is easy to understand. Because of the markets, people who had been
brought up to depend on the state to provide everything had developed some
economic independence. Customers had learned the importance of price and
had learned to choose their purchases, while market traders had emerged
who had learned the subversive skills of bargaining, procurement, and
logistics. People had also learned the usefulness of markets as sources of
news and gossip outside official control. The results of decades of ideological
work were at risk. Sometimes, the bribes are blatant, like the free
trips abroad, computers, flat-screen TVs or large deposits of cash in
foreign bank accounts for senior officials reported by a South American
importer doing business in Cuba before he was accused of corruption and
expelled in 2009. Other times, they may be inadvertent (a few dollars for
gas) or perfectly acceptable in market societies (paying commissions).
"The forms of persuasion -- let's call it that -- are nearly infinite," said the
importer. And illegal. As one Facebook commenter who appears to be
acquainted with Stephen Purvis, writes: Steve has meant well by
subsidising the marginal salaries of Cuban management staff -- but we all
know that ANY payments of foreign currency to Cubans is strictly prohibited
and is regarded as paying bribes.
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Link EE Generic
The plan causes an increase in spending
Daga, 5-15, 2013,
(Sergio, Economics of the 2013-2014 Debate Topic: U.S. Economic
Engagement Toward Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela, NCPA, JH,
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/economics-of-the-2013-2014-debate-topic-useconomic-engagement-toward-cuba-mexico-or-venezuela
The vast sums of money dispensed by multilateral foreign aid
agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,
give the officials of these agencies enormous influence on the governments
of aid-recipient nations, regardless of the success or failure of the
programs they suggest or impose as preconditions for receiving money.
Direct government-to government grants of money, shipments of free food,
and loans are also made available on terms more lenient than those
available in financial markets. Government-to-government loans are
periodically forgiven, allowed to default, or rolled over by
being repaid from the proceeds of new and larger loans. Foreign
aid is often a disguised subsidy to domestic manufacturing firms or farms.
The Export-Import Bank of the United States, for example, loans
money to foreign governments to purchase U.S. goods. Other
developed countries have similar agencies.
Economic engagement involves spending money

Daily Impact, 13,
(The Daily Impact: US Senator Calls for Deeper Economic Engagement in
Africa, the Impact, JH, http://blog.psiimpact.com/2013/03/the-daily-impact-ussenator-calls-for-deeper-economic-engagement-in-africa/
-Early reauthorization of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a 2000 law
to offer trade preferences to African countries to help open their economies
and build free markets. The law, which expires in 2015, has supported the
growth of an African middle class, reduced dependence on development
assistance and opened African markets to American companies, according to
the report. -Increasing the presence of U.S. foreign commercial
service officers, who help develop markets for U.S. exporters, in subSaharan Africa. Six officers are stationed there now. There are no officers in
five of the six African countries listed among the 10 fastest-growing
economies in the past decade. -Improved coordination between U.S.
government agencies as part of a more comprehensive strategy for
investment in sub-Saharan Africa. Theres literally 10 different federal
agencies doing trade policy and international development, Coons said.
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Making sure they work better together doesnt require more money. It just
requires spending the money well.
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Link EE Pork Barrel

Aid is pork barrel spending
Erik Lundsgarade- Senior Researcher at the German Development Institute
(DIE) December 2012
(The Domestic Politics of Foreign Aid Volume 1 of Routledge Explorations in

Development
Studies,http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Domestic_Politics_of_Foreig
n_Aid.html?id=Y8rKpnz0HkEC) S
The politics of the pork barrel spending is one extension of this logic. The
scale of pork barrel spending relating to projects where funding is
earmarked, for a specific purpose and a targeted beneficiary, is
often overstated. (Lee 2003). Nevertheless, congressional earmarking can
serve as an important means of building supporting coalitions for potentially
unpopular legislation (Evans 1994, Lee 2000, 2003). Aid spending has
been especially venerable to earmarking. As an example, a review of aid
programs prepared by the Congressional Research Service in 1988
noted that earmarks in that year affected 81 percent of USAIDs
operating budget reflecting a rising trend in the use of earmarks in the
course of the 1980s (Nowels 1989b).
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Link Energy Deficit $

Energy development and research- spends 172 billion
Bryan Walsh- New York Times- Science and Space November 11 20 11
(Does the U.S. Spend Too Much on Green Energy or Not Enough, New York
Times, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2099480,00.html)
The Post piece, by Steven Mufson, noted that from 1961 to 2008 the federal
government spent $172 billion on basic research and development of
advanced energy and suggested that we hadn't gotten anywhere near
our money's worth. Experimental nuclear plants, synthetic fuels, hydrogenpowered cars on the long list of government bets on new energy
technology, Mufson found few clean winners. As former Obama economic
adviser and Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers put it in an e-mail
to other White House staff about possible loans for Solyndra, the federal
government seems to be "a crappy VC." All this, plus the lingering fallout
from Solyndra a poster child for the Obama Administration's greeninvestment plans before its spectacular failure in September would seem
to put the final nails in the coffin for government green investment. Or does
it? First, it's important to note that subsidies for clean energy still lag far
behind the public money that goes toward oil, coal and natural gas projects .
According to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuels received
$409 billion in subsidies globally in 2010 , compared with $66 billion
for renewable power. Of course, fossil fuels supply far more energy than
renewable sources about 80% of global energy consumption and thus
give a better return on investment, on a megawatt-by-megawatt basis. But
coal and oil have been around for over a century, making them the very
definition of mature industries and therefore, one would think, less in need
of sustained government assistance.
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Link FA Deficit $
U.S foreign aid is deficit spending
Gretchen Hamel- The New York Times, 2012,
(Cant Afford Foreign Aid, or Cant Afford to Cut It?, The New York Times, 12-3,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/08/15/cant-afford-foreign-aidor-cant-afford-to-cut-it)
With the American economy and the federal budget in tatters, the $50
billion that the U.S. spends on foreign aid could be a tempting target
for deficit hawks. Should the U.S. sustain its contributions, when it cant
balance its own budget. Since 2009, Americans have watched our national
debt grow by 50 percent. Along with this increase, the concern for
government spending is intensifying. Not since the 1990s have
Americans been so focused on the debt, and rightfully so. According to Pew
data released this summer, our deficit is one of the fastest growing priorities
for Americans, eclipsed only by the economy and jobs. Just as a doctor
would treat an illness, we must look for the cause of the ailment . In the case
of the deficit, thats government overspending. So the question clearly is,
Where do we cut? But that's where the debate always veers off track .
Foreign aid often comes up, because it is a big and slow-moving target. Of
course, its only a drop of the total budget 1 percent but you have to
start somewhere. Some foreign aid spending is wasteful and even
counterproductive. Why do we give Pakistan $1 billion a year? Take
our aid to Pakistan, for example. Is there a better place to start than cutting
spending to a nation that quite likely aided and abetted the mastermind
behind 9/11, Osama bin Laden? A country that has put a man behind bars for
helping the C.I.A. track down bin Laden? Aid to Pakistan is only a little over $1
billion a year nothing compared to the $50 billion wasted yearly in
Medicare. But this is a cut that would be based on principle. It would be
foolish to cut all foreign aid. We just have to be smarter about how we spend
the money. There are plenty of worthy causes, but the waste and
counterproductive spending on foreign aid show that even the small line
items in the federal budget can be trimmed, if we make cuts based on
principles and priorities. On foreign aid and other areas of the budget , its
time for the president and Congress prioritize, reform and reduce
government spending. Otherwise, we will face the fiscal and
economic consequences.
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Link Trade Deficit $

Trade is deficit spending
Associated Press- USA Today- May 2 2013
(U.S. trade deficit falls to $38.8 billion, USA Today,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/05/02/trade-deficitmarch/2128791/) S
WASHINGTON (AP) The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in March for a second
month as the daily flow of imported crude oil dropped to the lowest level in
17 years. The trade deficit with China hit a three-year low. Overall, the deficit
shrank to $38.8 billion, an 11% drop from February's $43.6 billion, the
Commerce Department reported Thursday. Exports fell 0.9% to $184.3
billion as sales of machinery, autos and farm products declined. Imports fell
2.8% to $223.1 billion, led by a 4.4% drop in foreign petroleum. Crude oil
imports averaged just 7 million barrels per day, the lowest since March 1996.
A smaller trade gap can boost economic growth as U.S. companies earn more
from overseas sales while consumers and businesses spend less on foreign
products. For the first three months this year, the trade deficit is running at
an annual rate of $507.7 billion, 5.9% below last year's deficit of $539.5
billion. Economists are looking for the deficit to narrow slightly this year, in
part because they expect continued gains in U.S. exports. The politically
sensitive deficit with China shrank 23.6% in March to $17.9 billion, still far
above the imbalance with any other country. The deficit with the European
Union grew 13% in March to $9.9 billion even though U.S. exports to the
region rose 14.4%. But for the year, U.S. exports to Europe are down 8%
compared with the same period in 2012, reflecting the impact of a recession
in the 17 European Union countries that use the euro.
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*** Internal Link Debate
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IL Deficit Spending
Increased deficit spending kills the economy
Mitchell, Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University,
2013
(Matthew, Deficit Spending Displaces Private Economic Growth, US News,

http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-balancing-the-federal-budget-bea-top-policy-priority/deficit-spending-displaces-private-economic-growth,
MWH)
The case for budget balance begins with economic growth. A number
of studies have now found that nations with high debttypically
defined as debt in excess of 90 percent of GDPtend to grow more
slowly. Some still argue that the U.S. is special: We operate our own
currency and it happens to be the currency in which international business is
conducted. This advantage may allow us to blow through the 90 percent
mark without slowing growth. But the Congressional Budget Office is
now projecting thatabsent policy changeU.S. debt will reach 100
percent of GDP in about a decade and climb to 200 percent just 13
years after that. The U.S. might be special, but it isn't that special.
There is some level of debt that will affect us. And there is no law
that says international commerce will always be conducted in the
U.S. dollar (just ask the British). Even if economic growth is not your top
priority, excessive debt should still concern you. It makes it harder for
government to do other things that you might value. More debt means
higher debt payments. And every dollar the government sends to a
creditor is a dollar it might have spent on Social Security, Medicare,
or infrastructure. Assuming interest rates remain moderate, the CBO
projects that in just 12 years we will spend more on interest payments
than on Medicare. In 16 years, we will spend more on interest
payments than on Social Security.
Deficit spending kills the economy it trades off with

private profit
Edwards, director of tax policy studies at Cato Institute, 2011,
(Chris, senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, a
manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and an economist with the Tax
Foundation, Federal Spending Doesnt Work, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/federal-spending-doesnt-work,
MWH)
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Lets take a look at how government spending damages the economy
over the long run. Spending is financed by the extraction of
resources from current and future taxpayers. The resources
consumed by the government cannot be used to produce goods in
the private marketplace. For example, the engineers needed to build a
$10 billion government high-speed rail line are taken away from building
other products in the economy. The $10 billion rail line creates governmentconnected jobs, but it also kills at least $10 billion worth of private jobs.
Indeed, the private sector would actually lose more than $10 billion in this
example. That is because government spending and taxing creates
deadweight losses, which result from distortions to working,
investment and other activities. The CBO says that deadweight loss
estimates range from 20 cents to 60 cents over and above the
revenue raised. Harvard Universitys Martin Feldstein thinks that
deadweight losses may exceed one dollar per dollar of revenue
raised, making the cost of incremental governmental spending more
than two dollars for each dollar of government spending. Thus, a $10
billion high-speed rail line would cost the private economy $20 billion or
more. The government uses a leaky bucket when it tries to help
the economy. Former chairman of the Council of Economics Advisors,
Michael Boskin, explains: The cost to the economy of each additional
tax dollar is about $1.40 to $1.50. Now that tax dollar is put into a
bucket. Some of it leaks out in overhead, waste and so on. In a wellmanaged program, the government may spend 80 or 90 cents of that dollar
on achieving its goals. Inefficient programs would be much lower, $0.30 or
$0.40 on the dollar. Texas A&M economist Edgar Browning comes to
similar conclusions about the magnitude of the governments leaky
bucket: It costs taxpayers $3 to provide a benefit worth $1 to recipients.
The larger the government grows, the leakier the bucket becomes.
On the revenue side, tax distortions rise rapidly as tax rates rise. On
the spending side, funding is allocated to activities with ever lower
returns as the government expands. Figure 2 illustrates the
consequences of the leaky bucket. On the left-hand side, tax rates are low
and the government initially delivers useful public goods such as crime
reduction. Those activities create high returns, so per-capita incomes initially
rise as the government grows. As the government expands further, it
engages in less productive activities. The marginal return from
government spending falls and then turns negative. On the right-hand
side of the figure, average incomes fall as the government expands.
Government in the United States at more than 40 percent of GDP is
almost certainly on the right-hand side of this figure. In his 2008 book,
Stealing from Ourselves, Professor Browning concludes that todays welfare
state reduces GDP or average U.S. incomes by about 25 percent.
That would place us quite far to the right in Figure 2, and it suggests that
federal spending cuts would substantially increase U.S. incomes
over time.
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Spending causes economic decline

Richard Lachmann- sociology department at the State University of New
York at Alabany 2011
(The roots of American Decline, American Sociological Association,
http://contexts.org/articles/winter-2011/the-roots-of-american-decline)S
The dominant view, shared by almost all those on the right and many
centrists, is that fiscal crisis is due to rising spending on social
programs. (An alternative version of this theory points to increases in military
spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.) From this perspective,
excessive spending produces fiscal crisis which, in turn, causes
decline. The solution, then, is to cut back social benefits (or military
commitments) in order to head off a run on the U.S. dollar and drastic
increases in interest rates that would fatally weaken the U.S. economy. This
approach doesnt square with basic facts about American state spending. The
federal budget in the U.S. has held steady as a share of GDP since 1968 (see
below). That lack of growth is possible in part because social benefits in the
U.S. are among the skimpiest of any industrialized country, according to the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of
the thirty-three richest countries. The OECD also reports that poverty rates
are higher in the U.S. than most other rich countries. The last expansion of
Federal social programs occurred with the Great Society of the 1960s. And
military spending, again as a percentage of GDP, has actually declined
drastically since the Cold War (see below).
Deficit spending causes economic downturn

Thomas E. Woods Jr M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia Universitybachelor's from Harvard 12 (Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the
Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts
Will Make Things Worse by
http://book-nerd.info/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Meltdown%20A%20FreeMarket%20Look%20at%20Why%20the%20Stock%20Market%20Collapsed
%20the%20Economy%20Tanked%20and%20Government%20Bailouts%20Will
%20Make%20Things%20Worse%20by%20Thomas%20E%20Woods%20Jr%20%20Enlightenment%20Dawns.pdfkm\)
Of course downturns are inevitably painful, resulting as they do from
Unsustainable rates of project development and artificially high
standards of living created in large part by risky borrowing and lending. But
government interference in the form of stimulus spending, Fed
policy to lower interest rates even further, etc. invariably cause the
downturn to last longer and with a smaller rebound than would be
experienced otherwise. Both the Bush and Obama administrations are
going about things exactly wrong: trying to keep a financially
disastrous bubble artificially afloat through deficit spending. This
means that real resources will not be available to generate a rebound.It is
hard to compress the argument of this book any further because it is already
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so concise; the best thing to do is just the read the book. The upshot of all
this and the most important take-away message is that our current crisis is
not the result of the failure of free markets: rather, it resulted from the fact
that our markets are not truly free. They are distorted by the harmful
intervention of government which through its insurance policies and special
tax and regulation breaks for GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only
increase moral haxard, encourage risky lending and tamper with the supply
of money (which should be based preferably on a gold standard, or even
more ideally whatever medium of exchange people feel is appropriate to
their needs). The argument at least for me was more or less completely
persuasive: certainly this explanation makes the most sense of all the
analyses I have read of the crisis so far.
Spending cuts only deepens economic downturn

Krugman, 10-Nobel prize winning professor of Economics and
International Affairs at Princeton University (Paul, The Pain Caucus,
The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/opinion/31krugman.html)
The extent to which inflicting economic pain has become the accepted thing
was driven home to me by the latest report on the economic outlook from the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an influential Parisbased think tank supported by the governments of the worlds advanced
economies. The O.E.C.D. is a deeply cautious organization; what it says at
any given time virtually defines that moments conventional wisdom. And
what the O.E.C.D. is saying right now is that policy makers should
stop promoting economic recovery and instead begin raising interest
rates and slashing spending. Whats particularly remarkable about this
recommendation is that it seems disconnected not only from the real
needs of the world economy, but from the organizations own economic
projections. Thus, the O.E.C.D. declares that interest rates in the United
States and other nations should rise sharply over the next year and a half, so
as to head off inflation. Yet inflation is low and declining, and the O.E.C.D.s
own forecasts show no hint of an inflationary threat. So why raise rates? The
answer, as best I can make it out, is that the organization believes that
we must worry about the chance that markets might start expecting
inflation, even though they shouldnt and currently dont: We must
guard against the possibility that longer-term inflation
expectations could become unanchored in the O.E.C.D. economies,
contrary to what is assumed in the central projection. A similar
argument is used to justify fiscal austerity. Both textbook economics
and experience say that slashing spending when youre still
suffering from high unemployment is a really bad idea not only
does it deepen the slump, but it does little to improve the budget
outlook, because much of what governments save by spending less
they lose as a weaker economy depresses tax receipts. And the
O.E.C.D. predicts that high unemployment will persist for years. Nonetheless,
the organization demands both that governments cancel any further plans for
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economic stimulus and that they begin fiscal consolidation next year. Why
do this? Again, to give markets something they shouldnt want and currently
dont. Right now, investors dont seem at all worried about the solvency of
the U.S. government; the interest rates on federal bonds are near historic
lows. And even if markets were worried about U.S. fiscal prospects, spending
cuts in the face of a depressed economy would do little to improve
those prospects. But cut we must, says the O.E.C.D., because inadequate
consolidation efforts would risk adverse reactions in financial markets. The
best summary Ive seen of all this comes from Martin Wolf of The Financial
Times, who describes the new conventional wisdom as being that giving the
markets what we think they may want in future even though they show
little sign of insisting on it now should be the ruling idea in policy. Put
that way, it sounds crazy. And it is. Yet its a view thats spreading. And its
already having ugly consequences. Last week conservative members of the
House, invoking the new deficit fears, scaled back a bill extending aid to the
long-term unemployed and the Senate left town without acting on even the
inadequate measures that remained. As a result, many American families are
about to lose unemployment benefits, health insurance, or both and as
these families are forced to slash spending, they will endanger the jobs of
many more. And thats just the beginning. More and more, conventional
wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer.
And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain
itself will be all too real.
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IL Pork Barrel
Pork barrel spending bad- hurts economy
James Smith- Senior management Financial Services firms and business
consultant 2007
('Pork barrel spending' in Washington wastes tax dollars, Helium,

http://www.helium.com/items/419378-pork-barrel-spending-in-washingtonwastes-tax-dollars) S
Pork barrel spending has been rampant in recent years as the
Congress has created a process with a total lack of transparency to
circumvent spending due process review. Much of this "Pork" spending
would not stand up under any type of coherent review . As the
Republican Congress has failed to restrain spending, and President Bush has
refused to veto any spending bill, "Pork barrel "spending has increased every
year from 1991 through 2006. So what defines "Pork Barrel" spending? The
non profit, non-partisan group, "Citizens against Government Waste" has a
definition that uses common sense as follows: Requested by one Chamber
of Congress Not specifically authorized Not competitively awarded Not
requested by the President Greatly exceeds President's budget request or
prior year funding Not subject to Congressional hearings. Serves only a
local or special interest. Using this definition, "Citizens against Government
Waste" identified 2658 projects in 2007 at a cost to the taxpayer of 13.2
billion in the Defense and Homeland Security Appropriations actions. Since
1991, "Pork" identified under the above definition has totaled 252 Billion
dollars with Alaska and Hawaii being the biggest per capita beneficiaries.
This "Pork Barrel" spending in Washington comes at a time when the
Federal budget is in deep deficit. The attitude in Washington D.C. is
that there is a virtually unlimited supply of tax-payer dollars to
spend . Of course, when the budget deficit gets large enough and the dollars
begin to dwindle , then the only solution is to raise taxes. While the
Congressional career politicians were spending money on various "
Pork projects" to "bring home the bacon" for their home districts and
states, laws passed for Education ( No child Left behind ), Border Security
and others were not being properly funded and the country was in deficit
spending. The obvious conclusion is that political reelection is more important
to our career politicians than properly funding Education, Border Security or
the massive budget deficit regardless of what their statements are during
election campaigns. Finally, "Pork Barrel "spending in Washington
wastes taxpayer dollars that could be used for many other
progressive projects or to reduce the budget deficit. During the last
several years, the Congressional political hogs have had a feast at the "Pork
Barrel". The time has come for voters to demand that politicians of
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both parties go on a "Pork-Free Diet " for the financial health of the
nation overall.
USAID- is pork barrel spending- food aid program proves

Charles Kenny- a fellow at the Center for Global Development and the New
America Foundation March-18- 2013
(Its time to reform USAID, Blomberg Buisiness- Global Economics,
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-18/its-time-to-reform-usaid)
Although as much as $1.7 billion might be slashed from the U.S. foreign
assistance budget because of sequester cuts, little outcry has emerged.
Foreign aid has never been popular: In opinion polls, its often the first
expenditure suggested for the chopping block. Surveys suggest Americans
feel a moral responsibility to help the worlds worst off, but they believe the
aid bureaucracy is bloated and doesnt work. That, however, is a
misperception. In practice, the foreign aid system, and in particular, the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), work very well in
accomplishing what Washington politicians want them to do . But that
includes a range of purposes that have little to do with helping the
worlds poor. When it comes to buying friends at the United Nations, or
buying crops in the Midwest, or creating jobs around the Capital Beltway, the
U.S. foreign aid system is a paragon of effectiveness. Take the goal of buying
friends. Eric Werker, a Harvard Business School associate professor, and
Ilyana Kuziemko, now a Columbia Business School associate professor and
Harvard Ph.D., estimated in a 2006 Harvard paper that countries rotating
onto the UN Security Council were likely to see their U.S. aid increase by 59
percent. The aid then fell as the countries finished their terms. In a 1999
study, Illinois State Universitys T.Y. Wang found that U.S. aid successfully
affects UN voting patterns on issues vital to Americas national interests. The
foreign aid budget is also a prime vehicle for pork barrel spending.
The U.S. food aid program, for instance, purchases about $1 billion
worth of American crops a year. It spends roughly an additional $1 billion
transporting the crops overseas, in most cases using U.S.-flagged ships. A
study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research looked at contracts
issued by USAID for the relief effort in Haiti. It found that while only 0.02
percent of these contracts went to Haitian firms, more than 75 percent were
handed to firms in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Washingtonbased contractor Chemonics, with more than 3,000 employees, received
worldwide USAID program funds of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in
2011. Its perhaps unsurprising that aid designed to maximize friends, crop
purchases, and U.S. contractors isnt the most effective at supporting
development. Take food aid: Economics professors Nathan Nunn of Harvard
and Nancy Qian of Yale demonstrated in a 2010 paper that what determines
the size of U.S. food aid shipments isnt recipient need, but the size of the
U.S. crop. And about half the funding is used on shipping. That same money
could buy supplies in local markets and help farmers in developing countries.
Many U.S. contractors bring years of technical experience and a real
commitment to development. Yet the considerable majority of U.S. aid
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doesnt appear anywhere on recipient country budget plans, suggesting the
money is buying what American suppliers want to sellnot what recipients
need to get. So whos to blame for the poor record of U.S. foreign aid as a
tool of development? Its not the fault of the long-suffering staff of U.S. aid
agencies, who can deliver very effective programs if given the chance. A
global initiative backed by the U.S. and other donors supported delivery of
225 million measles vaccine doses in 2011 alonepart of a campaign that
has reduced measles deaths worldwide from 2.6 million in 1980 to 139,000 in
2010. The blame, instead, lies largely with members of Congress who
complain that aid is wasted because it doesnt lead to development,
and then turn around and ensure hardly any assistance is designed
or delivered with development as the primary goal. Theres pressure
for change. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is trying to fix at least two of the
problems that prevent aid from working better to promote development.
This agency is no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors
and calling it development, said Shah in 2011. He has followed through with
reforms designed to ensure more companies in recipient countries can win
some USAID contracts. The Obama administration is also considering
overhauling the food aid program so it delivers cash to hungry people or local
food buyers rather than shipping grain halfway around the world. USAIDs
current contractors have hired lobbyists from the Podesta Group to combat
procurement reform, and an alliance of domestic agricultural groups, shipping
interests, and U.S. nongovernmental organizations that implement the food
aid program are also resisting change. The food aid lobby isnt shy about
defending the idea that combating malnutrition overseas should benefit
American businesses at home: Growing, manufacturing, bagging, shipping,
and transporting nutritious U.S. food creates jobs and economic activity here
at home, provides support for our U.S. Merchant Marine, essential to our
national defense sealift capability, and sustains a robust domestic
constituency for these programs not easily replicated in alternative foreign
aid programs, they note. If all we want is friends, jobs, and crops, we
already have the aid program we need. But for those who want our support to
foster development and help the worlds poor, perhaps its time to overhaul
the way we provide foreign aid. Otherwise, well continue to funnel aid dollars
down Beltway and Cornbelt ratholes.
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IL AT: Keynesian Good

Stimulus doesnt improve the economy their ev doesnt
assume the massive debt weve already incurred
Mitchell, Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University, 13

MWH)
First, the evidence that deficit spending yields lasting growth is
nowhere near as clear as stimulus proponents make it out to be. In
fact, there is good reason to believe that deficit-financed spending
displaces private economic activity, even in the short run. Second,
the data suggest that there are diminishing marginal returns to
stimulus spending: It is less effective the more you do it. And we've
already done it a lot. The data also suggest that stimulus is less
effective in highly indebted nations. So as we pile on debt today, we
make future stimulus efforts that much less effective.
Keynesian spending fails empirics prove

Mitchell, Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University,
2013
MWH)
There is renewed talk in Washington about further spending measures to try
and stimulate the weak economy. That idea is remarkably nave and
misguided. It is now more than two years after passage of the $821
billion stimulus package in 2009, and it is obvious that that effort
was a hugely expensive Keynesian policy failure. The Obama
administrations attempt to pump up aggregate demand in the economy
simply hasnt worked. In Keynesian theory, the total amount of deficit
spending is the amount of stimulus delivered to the economy. Well,
weve had deficit spending of $459 billion in 2008, $1.4 trillion in
2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010 and $1.4 trillion in 2011. Yet despite that
enormous deficit-spending stimulus, U.S. unemployment remains
stuck at more than 9 percent and the recovery is very sluggish
compared to prior recoveries. Indeed, the current recovery appears to be
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slower than any since World War II, according to a recent Joint Economic
Committee study.
They dont boost the economy the multiplier is too

small, and the government mismanages empirics prove
Edwards, director of tax policy studies at Cato Institute, 2011,
(Chris, senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, a

manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and an economist with the Tax
Foundation, Federal Spending Doesnt Work, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/federal-spending-doesnt-work,
MWH)
Obama administration economists had claimed that the Keynesian
multipliers from government spending are large, meaning that spending
would give a big boost to GDP. But other economists have found that
Keynesian multipliers are actually quite small, meaning that added
government spending mainly just displaces private-sector activities.
Stanford University economist John Taylor took a detailed look at GDP
data over recent years, and he found little evidence of any benefits
from the 2009 stimulus bill. Any sugar high to the economy from
recent increases in government spending was at best very small and
short-lived. The reality is that Washington is very bad at trying to
micromanage short-term economic performance. Its failed stimulus
actions have just put the nation further into debt, which will harm
our long-term prosperity. Harvard Universitys Robert Barro
calculated that any short-term benefit that the 2009 stimulus bill
may have provided is greatly outweighed by the future damage
caused by higher taxes and debt.
Spending cuts provide more stimulus than spending

Alex Adrianson- editor for The Insider 2010
(Spending Cuts Are Good for the Economy, The Heritage Network,
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/16/spending-cuts-are-good-for-theeconomy/)S
Reducing budget deficits by cutting government spending has a

stronger record of economic stimulus than either reducing the deficit
with tax increases or increasing government spending. Thats what
Harvard economists Albert Alesina and Silvia Ardagna have found in their
recent research. They examined 107 instances of large reductions (at least
1.5 percent in one year) in budget deficits as well as 91 instances of large
increases (over 1.5 percent in one year) in budget deficits over the past 40
years. They found that when an economy expands following deficit
reduction, spending cuts were the largest part of the adjustment . At
the same time, when recessions followed deficit reduction, tax increases were
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the predominant policy. The authors also found that when budget deficits
increased, tax cuts had a more expansionary impact on the economy than
spending increases. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Alesina points to the
reason for these findings: Spending cuts signal that tax increases will
not occur in the future, or that if they do they will be smaller. A credible
plan to reduce government outlays significantly changes expectations of
future tax liabilities. This, in turn, shifts peoples behavior. Consumers and
especially investors are more willing to spend if they expect that
spending and taxes will remain limited over a sustained period of
time.
Keynesianism theory fails-
Tino Sanandaji- The American- Economic Policy- December 1, 2011

(Why Keynesianism Works Better in Theory Than in Practice, The American,
http://www.american.com/archive/2011/november/our-two-keynes-problem) S
The second definition of Keynesianism is a policy recipe for coping with
recessions, a cure for the disease of recessions. The promise is that the public
sector can bring the economy out of recessions through deficit spending. It
might seem natural that Keynesian theory implies Keynesian policy; indeed,
the two were intimately linked during the first decades of Keynesianism.
However, decades of historic experience alongside advances in
macroeconomics have shown that Keynesian fiscal policy is not as
effective as predicted by Keynesian theory. The diagnosis may be correct,
but the medicine most commonly associated with it has been shown to be
surprisingly impotent. The reason for this disconnect is that the economy
turned out to be more complex than assumed by simpler Keynesian
models. One of the three motivations for awarding Milton Friedman the
Nobel Prize was for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization
policy." Note that Friedman challenged the effectiveness of Keynesian fiscal
policy, not Keyness insight about the importance of aggregate demand for
recessions. Thus Milton Friedman wrote, "in one sense, we are all Keynesians
now; in another, no one is a Keynesian any longerWe all use the Keynesian
language and apparatus; none of us any longer accepts the initial Keynesian
conclusions." Not the first disappointment of Keynesian fiscal policy
Three-quarters of the public conclude that the stimulus failed. By the late
1970s, the failure of Keynesianism in demand management led economists to
become increasingly skeptical of active fiscal stabilization policy.
Macroeconomic theory advanced beyond the old, simple Keynesian models
by attempting to take into account the decision-making of individuals. In
2011, some of this work was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Economists did not turn against Keynesian policy purely for theoretical or
even ideological reasons, but rather because of the disappointing experience
from pervasive deficit spending over a long period in a large number of
countries. An influential 2003 study examined Keynesian policies in 91
countries in the postwar period and found that governments that use
fiscal policy aggressively induce significant macroeconomic
instability.1,2 Economists still recognized some use for Keynesian
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policies, but no longer viewed them as unambiguously beneficial .
When asked if fiscal policy can be an effective stabilizer, the majority of
U.S. graduate students in economics agreed with some reservation.3
Keynesianism economics still not working

Loren Heal- Freedom Works- on April 30, 2013
(Keynesian Economics: Still Failing After All These Years, Freedom Works,
http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/lheal/keynesian-economics-still-failingafter-all-these )S
Keynesianism is still not working. The central idea of the dominant
economic philosophy in Washington, DC, is that when the private economy
fails to produce enough demand, the government can and should step in to
take up the economic slack. It should have been long since discredited. But
like other bad ideas, people keep bringing it back. No sane person would say
we have not tried government spending to stimulate the economy. We've
tried it over and over, and it does not work. But still, some will beat a straw
man until he cries for submission. Henry Blodgett, writing at Yahoo,noted that
an important error had been uncovered in an influential economics finding.
Once the error was corrected, the "90% debt-to-GDP threshold" instantly
disappeared. Higher government debt levels still correlated with slower
economic growth, but the relationship was not nearly as pronounced. And
there was no dangerous point-of-no-return that countries had to avoid
exceeding at all costs. The discovery of this simple math error eliminated
one of the key "facts" upon which the austerity movement was based. It
also, in my opinion, settled the "stimulus vs. austerity" argument once and
for all. The argument is over. Paul Krugman has won. The only question now
is whether the folks who have been arguing that we have no choice but to cut
government spending while the economy is still weak will be big enough to
admit that. The straw man is twofold. First, debt is not just bad because it
slows down the economy, which it does a little. Debt is bad because it
eventually piles up and the interest crushes the economic life out of a
nation. Secondly, the 90% figure is important to those who identified the
problem as the deficit (and taxes being too low), rather than as too much
government that spends too much. Deficit and debt are symptoms of tring to
spend our way out of a slow economy. As governments try to cushion the
people from the effects of bad decisions or to spend their way to prosperity,
they tend to develop high levels of debt.
Keynesian theories debunked: net loss on growth

Peter Ferrara- public policy at Forbes- 4/4/13(Progressive Keynesian Myths Debunked: The Coming Redistribution of
Political and Economic Power Among the States, Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/04/14/progressive-keynesianmyths-debunked-the-coming-redistribution-of-political-and-ec)S
The myth of Keynesian economics is based on a failure to take into
account basic double entry bookkeeping. If the government spends
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more, where does the money for that increased spending come
from? Either from increased borrowing, or increased taxes, which
both take an equal amount of resources and spending out of the
private economy as they finance in increased government spending .
So not only can there not be a net increase in aggregate, or total, demand
from these policies, the spending is in truth a net drag on growth, as
the private economy spends money more productively and efficiently than
the government. That is why this Keynesian nostrum never worked in the
1930s, as the recession of 1929 extended into the decade long Great
Depression, and it hasnt worked anywhere else since.
Keynesian economics weaken the economy:

Tim Worstall- a Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London- 20 12(Failed Keynesianism caused the economic crisis, The Telegraph,
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/timworstall/100018262/failedkeynesianism-caused-the-economic-crisis/)S
Professors Paul Krugman and Richard Layard have launched a manifesto they are trying to get economists to sign up to their version of what went
wrong with the world economy and what we should do about it. I can't sign it
as I'm not an economist. But even if I were, I wouldn't because they've
made a very bad error in the analysis of the basic cause of the crisis. Leave
entirely aside their advice on what should be done now; I'd argue that what
went wrong is the perfect proof of why Keynesian demand management
of the economy will never work. Here's an extract from Krugman and
Layard: The causes. Many policy makers insist that the crisis was caused by
irresponsible public borrowing. With very few exceptions other than Greece
this is false. Instead, the conditions for crisis were created by
excessive private sector borrowing and lending, including by overleveraged banks. The collapse of this bubble led to massive falls in output
and thus in tax revenue. So the large government deficits we see today are a
consequence of the crisis, not its cause. Think back to what basic
Keynesianism demands: fiscal policy, the gap between what the government
collects in taxes and what it spends, should be counter-cyclical. When
demand is weak, as now, there should be a big deficit to compensate.
However, it is also true that when demand is strong, the same theory insists
that there should be a large surplus. Nigel Lawson's Public Sector Debt
Repayment should be going on. These are two halves of the same theory. If
you want a budget deficit in a slump then you must also want a budget
surplus in a boom.
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*** Impact Debate
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MPX War
Economic decline leads to conflict multiple warrants
Mansfield and Pollins, 03 (Edward Deering, Hum Rosen Professor of
Political Science, Chair of the Political Science Department, and Director of
the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of
Pennsylvania, Brian M, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio State
University and a Research Fellow at the Mershon Center, Economic
Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring
Debate, University of Michigan Press, http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=L53fR-TusZAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=
%22economic+engagement%22+
%2B+economy&ots=Ew9trq6DvC&sig=9t0FLFv90VxA0Tc4xsiBBrpCYVg#v=o
nepage&q=%22economic%20engagement%22%20%2B
%20economy&f=false, MWH)
Central to much of the literature on interdependence and conflict is the longstanding claim that open international markets and heightened
economic exchange inhibit interstate hostilities, liberals have been the
most forceful advocates of this thesis and have stressed a variety of different
causal mecha-nisms in developing it: One argumentcast primarily at the
level of the nation-stateis that economic exchange and military
conquest are substitute means of acquiring the resources needed to
promote political security and eco-nomic growth (e.g., Staley t939). As
trade and foreign investment increase, there are fewer incentives to
meet these needs through territorial expansion, imperialism, and
foreign conquest (Rosecrance 1986). Conversely, barriers to
international economic activity stimulate conflicts of interest that
can con-tribute to political-military discord Winer 1951, 259). Another
liberal argu-mentcast largely at the level of the country-pair. or dyadis
that economic intercourse increases contact and promotes
communication between private actors in different countries, as well
as between governments. Rising contact and communication, in
turn, are expected to foster cooperative political rela-tions (Doyle
1997, chap. 8; Hirschman 1977, 61; Stein 1993; Viner 1951, 261). Still
another theme stressed by many liberals is that commercial openness
generates efficiency gains that, in turn, render private traders and
consumers dependent on foreign markets. Because political
antagonism risks disrupting economic relations among participants
and jeopardizing the gains from trade, these actors have reason to
press public officials to avoid military conflicts. For their part. public
officialswho rely on societal actors for political support and have
an interest in bolstering their country's economic performance
have reason to attend to such demands. This argument, which is
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addressed at length in the following chapters, has been a centerpiece of
liberal views on war for cen-turies. Montesquieu, for example, claimed that
"the natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace. Two nations that trade
together become mutually depen-dent: if one has an interest in
buying, the other has an interest in selling; and all unions are based
on mutual needs" (quoted in Hirschman 1977, So). Whereas Montesquieu's
claim centers on bilateral relations, the argument that height-ened economic
dependence inhibits belligerence has also been cast at the sys-temic level of
analysis. As Barry B117.311 (1984, 598) mentions, a colt element of the
liberal position is that "a liberal economic order makes a substantial
and positive contribution to the maintenance of international
security."
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MPX AT: US Not K2 Global

ECON
U.S economy key to global economy
Michael Schuman- Time- Wall Street Journal and a staff writer for ForbesUniversity of Pennsylvania and a master of international affairs from
Columbia. 2011
(What the U.S. debt deal means for the global economy, Time- business and
money
http://business.time.com/author/michaeljschuman/#ixzz2YfgcUuvp)S
But just as a default by the U.S. would have had an outsized impact on
the global economy, due to the unique position of America in the
world, a deal struck to alter the direction of fiscal policy will also have a
tremendous effect. The decisions made (or in this case, not made) by
Washington in the debt agreement will reverberate through the world
economy for years to come. First of all, in the short term, we can all
forget about U.S. fiscal policy being employed to stimulate the anemic
recovery in the worlds largest economy. The debt deal, by capping annual
appropriations and imposing $2.4 trillion in spending cuts over the next
decade, takes any hope of further stimulus off the table. We can debate
whether or not thats a good idea, With U.S. GDP growth at an annualized
rate of a mere 1.3% in the second quarter, and unemployment still
astronomical at 9.2%, some economists have been arguing the U.S. needs
more spending, not cutting, to keep the recovery alive. But Washington has
chosen fiscal repair over economic repair. That means a lot to Americans
especially those millions still looking for work but it also means a lot to the
rest of the world. Companies and workers from southern China to
southern Africa depend on the giant U.S. economy, so a slow recovery
in the U.S. eats into growth prospects everywhere else, even roaring
emerging markets like China. (The HSBC purchasing managers index for
China fell below 50 for the first time in a year in July, a sign that its
manufacturing sector is slowing.)
U.S future growth key to worlds economies

Don Lee, Tribune Washington Bureau- 2010(Global economy again depending on the American consumer, Chicago
Tribune Business, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-06-20/business/ctbiz-0620-global-economy-20100620_1_consumer-debt-global-economyamerican-consumer)S
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WASHINGTON With Europeans cutting back their spending and
China again flooding the world with low-cost goods, a familiar and
ominous pattern is re-emerging in the global economy: Americans are
again being cast as the world's consumers of last resort . And, with
unemployment still pushing 10 percent and workers' incomes largely flat, that
may be a prescription for new trouble. Although Europe's debt crisis has
quieted and the U.S. and global economies are projected to rebound this
year, future growth will depend on changing the spending patterns
of the world's biggest economies none more so than America's .
U.S economy crucial to stability of the world economy

European Central Bank- March 2009
(The Role of the United States in the Global Economy and its evolution over
time, European Central Bank,
http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp1034.pdf)S
The U.S Economy is often seen as the engine of the world economy .
As a result any sign of slowdown in the United States raises concerns
about harmful spillovers to the other economies. The current economic
recession in the United States has questioned the ability of the global
economy to decouple from U.S cynical developments. While there
were some signs of decoupling in the first quarters following the U.S
downturn, they disappeared rapidly towards the end of 2008, when the crisis
became more global and the economic cycles turned out to be more
synchronous across the world.
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MPX Poverty
Economic downturn causes deep poverty
Sharon Parrott- 2008 Secretary Sebelius Counselor for Human Services
Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Vice President
for Budget Policy and Economic Opportunity, (Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, Recession Could Cause Large Increases in Poverty and Push Millions
into Deep Poverty, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1290)S
Like previous recessions, the current downturn is likely to cause
significant increases both in the number of Americans who are poor
and the number living in deep poverty, with incomes below half of
the poverty line. Because this recession is likely to be deep and the
government safety net for very poor families who lack jobs has
weakened significantly in recent years, increases in deep poverty in
this recession are likely to be severe. There are a series of steps that
federal and state policymakers could take to soften the recessions harshest
impacts and limit the extent of the increases in deep poverty, destitution, and
homelessness.[1] Goldman Sachs projects that the unemployment rate will
rise to 9 percent by the fourth quarter of 2009 (the firm has increased its
forecast for the unemployment rate a couple of times in the last month). If
this holds true and the increase in poverty relative to the increase in
unemployment is within the range of the last three recessions , the number
of poor Americans will rise above its 2006 level by 8.4-10.9 million ,
the number of poor children will rise by 2.6-3.9 million, and the
number of children in deep poverty will climb by 1.5-2.4 million. (This
increase will not take place in a single year, but will occur over several years.)
Poverty is the deadliest form of structural violence it is

equivalent to an ongoing nuclear war.
Gilligan, 96
[James, Former Director of Mental Health for the Massachusetts Prison
System, Violence, p.]
In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die
because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear that caused 232
million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die
from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the
Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing,
unenending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide,
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perpetuated on the weak and poor ever year of every decade, throughout the
world.
51

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*** AFF Answers
53

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NU Economy Low
US and global economy are declining IMF proves
Lee and Puzzanghera, 7/9 (Don, writer for Chicago Tribune, Jim, writer for
Chicago Tribune, IMF lowers U.S. and global economic growth forecasts,
Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-imf-worldeconomy-20130710,0,5885679.story, MWH)
The slowdown in developing economies has been building for some
time but has captured greater attention recently because of China's credit
crunch and the prospects of monetary policy tightening by the U.S. Federal
Reserve. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund cut its U.S. and
global economic forecasts for this year and next, citing primarily
slower growth in key developing nations as well as a deepening
recession in the Eurozone. The IMF also noted that federal spending
reductions in the U.S. were weighing on the recovery. The world
economy will grow 3.1% this year, the Washington-based IMF said, down
from its April projection of 3.3%. Growth also will be slower next year
3.8% compared with an earlier 4% forecast. The IMF estimated that the
U.S. economy would expand at a modest 1.7% rate this year and pick
up next year to 2.7%. Both figures also are down 0.2 percentage points
from the organization's projections in its April World Economic Outlook.
Although part of the reason for the change in the U.S. forecast is the
automatic federal spending cuts, known as the sequester, the U.S.
economy and particularly American export manufacturers are likely
to feel a pinch from slower growth in developing and emerging
market economies.
Even if they win that the economy is recovering now, its

bad compared to its state before the recession
The Federal Reserve, for one, just reduced its growth outlook to 2.8
percent at most for 2013. The shallow recovery we're seeing may indeed
continue through 2014 and beyond. Since employment now
consistently lags well behind GDP, we'll have a long slog before we
reach pre-crisis unemployment levels (below 4.6 percent). Some Federal
Reserve officials believe it might take three years just to get from
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today's 7.6 percent down to 6.5 percent. Full employment would still
be nowhere in sight.
55

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NU Spending Low
U.S. Government cutting spending now- multiple sectors
Calmes, 5-5, (Jackie, Obama Budget to Include Cuts to Programs in Hopes
of Deal, NY Times, JH, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/us/socialprograms-face-cutback-in-obama-budget.html?hp&_r=1&
President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing
cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to
demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive
prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say. In
a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a
budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list
that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the
final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last
year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the
presidents demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some
corporations. Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax
revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the
year. The administrations hope is to create cracks in Republicans antitax
resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the
across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect
March 1. Mr. Obamas proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts.
And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes
that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.
Spending Low now and falling- the sequester

Economist, 7-6, (Squeezing the Pentagon, The Economist, JH,
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21580460-wrong-way-cutamericas-military-budget-squeezing-pentagon?
zid=309&ah=80dcf288b8561b012f603b9fd9577f0e)
Those cuts$500 billion over the next nine years, on top of $487
billion already under waywere designed to be so painful that they would
force Republicans to do a budget deal with Barack Obama to avoid them. But
it turns out that Republicans hate taxes even more than they love the armed
forces. No deal was reached. On March 1st the sequester began.
Struggling to find savings of $37 billion in the rest of this fiscal year, the
Pentagon is at last making serious plans. This month it is expected to produce
a report outlining the impact of the $52 billion-worth of cuts that are
heading its way for the next fiscal year, which begins in October.
The presidents 2014 defense budget request, published in April, made no
concession to the spending caps demanded by the BCA. Unrevised, it would
mean that the cuts would either be applied by Congress (highly unlikely) or
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imposed across the board. That would make it impossible for the Pentagon to
set priorities: outdated programs would be over-funded and vital new ones
starved of cash.
Government spending is falling, the sequester is expected

again next year
Bartel, Staff writer at the Virginian-Pilot, 7-4,
(Bill, Admiral: Brace for similar sequester impact in 2014, PilotOnline, JH,
http://hamptonroads.com/2013/07/admiral-brace-similar-sequester-impact2014
Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, told gatherings of

Hampton Roads-based sailors and regional business and political leaders
Wednesday that unless Congress intercedes, he's preparing for 2014 to be
much like this year, with reductions in some military operations and
ship construction and repairs, and the possibility of more civilian
furloughs. During a one-day visit to the region, Greenert, the Navy's top
officer, voiced strong support for Oceana Naval Air Station, which several
years ago was considered for closing because of urban encroachment, and
for Newport News' nuclear shipbuilding operations. In a morning all-hands
meeting with about 950 sailors and Marines at Oceana and a noon Hampton
Roads Chamber Commerce luncheon in Virginia Beach, the admiral
acknowledged he expects that a divided Congress won't approve an
annual budget before the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1. He also said
he doubts lawmakers will stop the second year of automatic defense
budget cuts known as sequestration.
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AC QE
Alt cause quantitative easing
Hwang, reporter for Bloomberg, 6-25, 2013,
(Inyoung, U.S. Stocks Rebound From Nine-Week Low on Economic Data,
Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/u-s-stock-futuresgain-indicating-s-p-500-rebound.html, MWH)
QE lifted all boats, Witold Bahrke, who helps oversee $55 billion as a
senior strategist at PFA Pension A/S in Copenhagen, wrote in an e-mail.
Equally, its removal will shake all markets. The recent comments
from central-bank officials show that they are a bit scared about the
consequences of their own words and do not want to see a cold-turkey
reaction in markets in the context of a still-fragile world economy.
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Keynes Good
Stimulus is key to the economy - jobs
and executive vice president of Bard, 13 (Dimitri, What the economy needs is
even more deficit spending, Deseret News,
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765626414/What-the-economy-needs-iseven-more-deficit-spending.html?pg=all, MWH)
Despite prevailing notions in the capital and throughout the nation, those of
us at the Levy Economics Institute along with many other analysts and
economists have concluded that the deficit should be increased. Why
add to the deficit right now? Jobs. Our economic models clearly show that
without increased government outlays we'll be unable to generate
enough GDP growth to seriously attack unemployment. If we tried to
balance the budget through tax hikes, our still-recovering economy would be
hurt. That leaves a temporarily bigger deficit as an important option. A
mutation in the link between growth and jobs makes the issue
urgent. While we are seeing some economic growth, the
unemployment rate is not responding as strongly to the gains as it
did in the past. This slow job growth today's "jobless recovery"
isn't an outlier. It's a phenomenon that has been increasing over the
last three decades, with jobs coming back more and more slowly after a
downturn, even when GDP is increasing. The weak employment response
has been an almost straight-line trend for more than 30 years.
Stimulus is good empirics prove

The Federal Reserve, for one, just reduced its growth outlook to 2.8
percent at most for 2013. The shallow recovery we're seeing may indeed
continue through 2014 and beyond. Since employment now
consistently lags well behind GDP, we'll have a long slog before we
reach pre-crisis unemployment levels (below 4.6 percent). Some Federal
Reserve officials believe it might take three years just to get from
today's 7.6 percent down to 6.5 percent. Full employment would still
be nowhere in sight. The quantitative data are telling us that without
a stimulus, we can't expect a strong employment lift. But instead of
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stimulus, we're devising federal budgets that cut spending and lay off
workers. The sequester is expected to depress GDP growth by perhaps half a
percentage point when we know that more growth than ever will be
needed to raise employment and cost anywhere from 700,000 to more
than 1 million jobs. Slower government spending is one reason that
post-recession growth has been below par compared with other
recoveries, Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen has argued. As government
outlays and employment have shrunk, the contribution of public
funds to national growth has also fallen. By our estimates, that
contribution now stands at about zero. That's another data point
indicating that federal deficits need to be increased.
Spending stimulates the economyThe Week: 2/24/09 (How Spending Stimulates the Economy, The Week,
http://theweek.com/article/index/93614/how-spending-stimulates) S
will the Obama deficit-spending plan work? Will throwing $800 billion$500
billion in extra government spending, and $300 billion in tax cutsat the
economy produce a world in which production and employment are higher and
unemployment lower than would otherwise have been the case? The short
answer is yes. The short reason is that spending workseras in which some
group or other gets excited about future prospects and starts madly spending
money are eras in which production and employment are high and
unemployment is low. And the government, in this respect, is just like any other
group of starry-eyed optimists whose eagerness to spend pulls the economy into
a high-employment, high-pressure boom. Consider the engines of previous
boosts to production and employment. Between 2003 and 2005 the assembled
investors of the world discovered the American housing market. Low interest
rates produced by the Federal Reserve allowed them to borrow and leverage up
cheaplyand the promise of financial engineering that would greatly help them
diversify risk made them think investing in new construction and new
homeowners moves into new construction was a profit opportunity. Spending on
home construction rose. And the adult civilian employment to population ratio
rose from 62 percent to 63.5 percent while the unemployment rate fell from 6.0
percent to 4.8 percent. Between 1996 and 1998 the assembled investors of
America discovered the Internet and spent enormous sums to exploit and expand
it. And the adult civilian employment to population ratio rose from 63 percent to
nearly 65 percent as the unemployment rate fell 5.6 percent to 4.3 percent. In
August, 1982, Paul Volckers Federal Reserve released the interest-rate chokehold
it had been using to strangle the economy. Lower interest rates induced
homebuilders to spend massively, since for the first time in nearly half a decade
they could obtain financing for construction. At the same time, the Reagan
administration ramped up defense spending for the second cold war, and luxury
spending rose as the Reagan tax cuts gave money back to Americas rich. The
adult employment-to-population ratio rocketed up from 57.2 percent to 59.9
percent in the short order of two years while the unemployment rate fell from
10.8 percent to 7.3 percent. These are just three examples of a general principle:
each major business-cycle expansion we have seen has been driven by a leading
wave of spendingby some group that became enthusiastic about their
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prospects and decided to greatly increase its spending. And that pulled
employment and production up. Now we are attempting to do the same thing
once againbut this time with the government as the leading spender. Obamas
stimulus spending increases are bigger, as a share of the economy, than
Reagans defense increases were, while Obamas tax cuts are smaller. Unlike
1983, when the Fed cut interest rates to help Reagans economic recovery, it
cannot do so to help Obama. The Fed has done all the cutting it can. Still, a boost
to spending by the government should have the same effects as boosts to
spending by luxury consumers and the defense department and homebuilders in
the early 1980s, by the high-tech sector in the late 1990s, and by homebuilders
in the mid-2000s. The governments money, after all, is as good as anybody
elses. So there is little question about the likely impact of the Obama deficitspending program: production and employment are going to be higher than they
would have been otherwise. As Greg Mankiw, the former chief economic adviser
to George W. Bush, said back in 1983: There is nothing novel about this. It is
very conventional short-run stabilization policy: You can find it in all of the leading
textbooks.
Spending key to economic growthEzra Klein columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to
MSNBC-January 2013 (Government is hurting the economy by spending
too little, The Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/30/governmentis-hurting-the-economy-by-spending-too-little/) S
Youve heard this before: The government is holding the economy back. And
its true. The newly released numbers for economic growth in the fourth
quarter, which show the economy shrinking at an 0.1 percent annual rate,
prove that. But exactly what the government is doing to hold the economy
back might surprise you. Typically, when people say the government is
hurting the recovery, they mean that deficits are too high and uncertainty
over future policy is scaring businesses. But theres little evidence of that.
The main reason to worry about deficits is that theyll hike interest rates, as
government borrowing crowds out private borrowing, and that makes it
harder for businesses to grow and individuals to invest. But interest rates are
about as low as theyve ever been. After accounting for inflation, the federal
government has been able to borrow at an unprecedented negative inflationadjusted rate so, the market is, essentially, paying us to keep their money
safe since 2011. As such, most deficit hawks warn that the problem with
our deficits is that markets might, at some point in the future, move
unpredictably and swiftly to punish us for our deficits. Perhaps thats true. But
implicit in that argument is that theres no real evidence that deficits are
hurting the economy now. Nor is there strong evidence that businesses are
holding back on investment for any reason save lack of demand. The general
factoid you hear in support of this argument is that corporations are sitting on
more than $2.5 trillion in cash, with the implication being that theyd be
spending that cash if not for the paralyzing effects of federal policy.But the
build-up of cash reserves or, to be more technical (and more accurate),
liquid assets is a long-term trend that hasnt accelerated since the
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recession. The Federal Reserve keeps data on liquid assets held by nonfinancial corporations, and the build-up was faster from 1997 to 2000 than it
was from 2008 to 2011. Why corporations are holding so much more cash is
an interesting mystery, but its not one that began with the passage of
Obamacare. A big reason for this is cutbacks on the state and local level,
which have been much larger than cutbacks at the federal level. In 2010, for
instance, federal spending took 0.23 percentage points off GDP, while state
and local spending took 0.43 percentage points off. As such, Washington
often misses the overall contraction in government spending, as the bulk of
that contraction has been at the state and local levels. But federal spending
has been contracting too.Another way of looking at this data is to compare
the contribution of private spending and public spending to economic growth.
Here are those numbers since 2009: Economists expect that to continue.
Mark Zandi of Moodys Analytics projects the sequester alone will cut 0.5
percentage points off growth in 2013 if its allowed to go into effect. Add that
to the expiration of the payroll tax cut and assorted other belt-tightening
measures at the federal level and total fiscal drag, he says, is likely to be
more than one percentage point of GDP in 2013 a significant hit when total
GDP growth isnt expected to be above three percentage points. These
numbers, by the way, only measure the most direct contribution of
government spending. They dont measure indirect contributions, as when a
defense contractor uses money from his federal contract to buy a house. His
house purchase wouldve shown up in private investment, not public
investment, but its absence doesnt show up anywhere at all.So yes, the
government is hurting the recovery. But its not because of deficits or
uncertainty, or at least, its hard to find evidence for either theory. The real,
provable damage the government has done to economic growth in recent
years has been in cutting back on spending and investment since 2010.
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No Link FA
Foreign Aid isnt deficit spending
AMFAR- foundation for making aids history- for aids research March 20 13
(The Evidence on U.S Investments in Foreign Aids, amFAR,
http://www.amfar.org/uploadedFiles/_amfarorg/Articles/On_The_Hill/2013/IB
%20Foreign%20Aid.pdf)
Cuts in foreign aid spending would not make a meaningful
contribution to deficit reduction. Foreign aid accounts for only
about one percent of U.S. government spending,1 with poverty
focused development and humanitarian spending representing roughly 0.5
percent of federal outlays.2 The share of the federal budget allocated
to foreign assistance has substantially declined over time, falling
by almost 80 percent since 1965. peace in strife-torn regions and helps
countries recover from conflict.14 Foreign aid programs support
counterterrorism efforts, destroy dangerous weapons (such as mines, small
arms, or shoulder-fired missiles), and train law enforcement agents.13
The powerful security potential of U.S. foreign aid is illustrated in Vietnam,
where it has helped convert a former enemy into a genuine partner in one
of the worlds most strategically important regions.
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AT: Biz Con

Turn business leaders view Latin America as a valuable
investment
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, 13
(Business Prospects in Latin America, ICAEW,

http://www.icaew.com/members/resources-for-business/businessmanagement/customers-and-markets/overseas-markets/latin-americapromotion?
utm_source=website&utm_medium=rhc&utm_content=apr13&utm_campaig
n=latinamerica, MWH)
Business optimism is high not just in Brazil but in Peru, Chile and Mexico.
A Grant Thornton survey conducted in 2012 puts Peru at number one globally
for business confidence. The firms research also reports that 22% of
businesses surveyed worldwide are considering expansion into the
region this year. Across Latin America as a whole, there are strong
expectations for increased investment in plant, construction and
R&D in 2013. Colombia is the fourth largest economy in Latin America and
might be worth considering too. The country is rich in natural resources and
analysts predict strong growth in the light of improved security, an increase
in mining activity and strong commodity prices. Mexico is one of the top
five global emerging economies. It offers a large internal consumer
market and, with its proximity to the US, is an attractive alternative
to China as a manufacturing base.
Turn business leaders view Latin America as a valuable

investment
Welber, president and CEO of Chevy Chase Trust Co., 11 (Peter,
CEO of ASB Capital Management and a director of Chevy Chase Trust Co. and
ASB Capital Management, member of the Economic Club of Washington,
board chairman of the Montgomery County Community Foundation, Why
there's investment potential in Latin America, Washington Business Journal,
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/2011/02/why-theres-investmentpotential-in.html, MWH)
A couple of weeks ago, while lamenting the onset of cold weather here in
Washington, I discussed the investment potential of Latin America.
Since winter does not appear to be ending any time soon, thinking about
Latin America still has appeal. While our current local climate in the
Washington DC area may not be sunny, the business climate in Latin
America is certainly heating up. One of the more telling economic
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statistics is the GDP per capita number. The international experience
is that once this number hits the $3000 level, countries typically will
begin to see the development of a middle class. Once $5000 is
achieved, a critical mass develops and middle class growth takes off.
The latest World Bank data - using a constant year 2000 US$ - shows that
Chile achieved this middle class growth phase in 2002 and Brazil, ending
2009 at $4419, will soon be there. Meanwhile, Colombia with a GDP per
capita of $3102 is at the beginning stages of developing a domestic
middle class consumer economy and Peru is not far behind at $2913 (as a
comparison, the two emerging market headliners of China and India have
GDP per capita levels of $2206 and $757, respectively). With the burgeoning
middle class, the region's domestic economies are beginning to take
shape and business confidence is increasing. In an investment world
fraught with uncertainty and risk, Latin America, with its growth
potential, could contain some unique opportunities for investors
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AT: Impact ECON Decline

Doesnt => War
Studies prove economic decline doesnt produce war
Miller 00 Morris, economist, adjunct professor in the University of Ottawas
Faculty of Administration, consultant on international development issues,
former Executive Director and Senior Economist at the World Bank, Winter,
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 25, Iss. 4, Poverty as a cause of
wars? p. Proquest
Do wars spring from a popular reaction to a sudden economic
crisis that exacerbates poverty and growing disparities in wealth and incomes? Perhaps one could argue, as some
The question may be reformulated.
scholars do, that it is some dramatic event or sequence of such events leading to the exacerbation of poverty that, in
turn, leads to this deplorable denouement. This exogenous factor might act as a catalyst for a violent reaction on the part
of the people or on the part of the political leadership who would then possibly be tempted to seek a diversion by finding
According to a study
undertaken by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
there would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis. After studying
ninety-three episodes of economic crisis in twenty-two countries in Latin
America and Asia in the years since the Second World War they concluded that:19 Much of the
conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be
wrong ... The severity of economic crisis - as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes ... (or, in democratic states, rarely) to
an outbreak of violence ... In the cases of dictatorships and semidemocracies, the ruling elites responded to
or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and setting in train the process leading to war.
crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another).
Economic decline doesnt lead to war democracy checks

Rajan, IMF Chief Economist and Professor of Finance at
the University of Chicago, 13 (Raghuram, chief economic adviser in
Indias finance ministry, Chairman of Indias Committee on Financial Sector

Reforms, Conflict Management and Economic Growth, Project Syndicate,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/underdevelopment-and-theinstitutions-of-social-peace-by-raghuram-rajan#BVLpZ7vjOebdrhZZ.99, MWH)
NEW DELHI One of the most interesting aspects of the prolonged
economic crisis in Europe, and of the even longer crisis in Japan, is the
absence of serious social conflict at least thus far. Yes, there have been
strikes, marches, and growing anger at political leaders, but protests have
been largely peaceful.
While that may change, the credit for social peace must go to
institutions such as elections (throwing the rascals out is a nonviolent way to vent popular anger), responsive democratic
legislatures, and effective judiciaries. All of these institutions have
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successfully mediated political conflict during a time of great
adversity in advanced countries.
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AT: Impact ECON Resilient

Americas economy is resilient a free market can easily
adjust to shocks
Connerly, Ph.D. in economics from Duke University, 12 (Bill,
Senior Vice President at First Interstate Bank, awarded the Chartered

Financial Analyst designation in 1999, on-line contributor to Forbes and the
author of Businomics, a book about economics for business leaders, chairman
of the board of Cascade Policy Institute, a member of Oregon Governor John
Kitzhabers Council of Economic Advisors, Senior Fellow at the National
Center for Policy Analysis, Americas Resilient Economy: What Happens When
Things Go Wrong, Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2012/07/23/americas-resilienteconomy-what-happens-when-things-go-wrong/, MWH)
Americas economy is certainly in a tender state. But the pessimism of
the presidential slanging-match misses something vital. Led by its inventive
private sector, the economy is remaking itself (see article). Old
weaknesses are being remedied and new strengths discovered, with
an agility that has much to teach stagnant Europe and dirigiste
Asia. The point that The Economist is close tobut does not quite reachis
that the measure of an economy is not whether they get the decisions right.
Those important decisions are about how to use their resources, what to
make, in what methods, and for what markets. The measure of an
economy is what happens when they get their decisions wrong. As
an example, we got housing wrong a few years back. The private sector
believed that housing prices would rise steadily, and thus that loans backed
by housing could not go wrong, even if the borrowers had poor credit.
Having learned a lesson, we reacted. The Economist notes that we have
a huge natural gas production increase. Our private, profitmotivated energy sector reacts quickly to opportunities. One reason
the world is not awash in petroleum is that in many countries,
governments have taken over oil and natural gas production.
Decisions are slow and politically motivated. A profit-motivated
economy adjusts quickly. Who would have thought that the iPhone
would revolutionize communications? What did our economy do after
the iPhone? Google developed the Android operating system,
Microsoft developed smart phone software, and Blackberry improved
their Internet capabilities. These decisions were not all correct. However,
they are part of a self-correcting system. In contrast, the most
politicized parts of our economy are the least self-correcting. For example,
even though private sector lenders are now cautious about home buyers with
bad credit, the Federal Housing Administration has increased its role in
helping people who dont qualify for conventional financing. When the price
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of oil and natural gas was highly regulated, back in the 1970s, petroleum
production failed to respond to rising prices.
No impact to US economic decline social safety nets

check conflict
Rajan, IMF Chief Economist and Professor of Finance at
the University of Chicago, 13 (Raghuram, chief economic adviser in
Indias finance ministry, Chairman of Indias Committee on Financial Sector
Reforms, Conflict Management and Economic Growth, Project Syndicate,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/underdevelopment-and-theinstitutions-of-social-peace-by-raghuram-rajan#BVLpZ7vjOebdrhZZ.99, MWH)
Societies with well-functioning institutions allocate the burden of
distress in predictable ways. For example, people who suffer the most
adversity can fall back on an explicit social safety net a minimum
level of unemployment insurance, for example. In the United States in
recent years, federal and state legislatures prolonged unemployment
benefits as joblessness persisted. Similarly, debtors and creditors can
rely on credible bankruptcy proceedings to determine their relative
shares. With an explicit institutional mechanism in place to dictate
the division of pain, there is no need to take to the streets.
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Turn War
Economic growth necessitates the government to
expropriate minorities property rights; that leads to
armed conflict.
Lawson-Remer, Fellow of Council on Foreign Relations,
assistant professor of international affairs at The New
School, fellow of Harvard Law School, 11 (Terra, Property
Insecurity, Conflict, and Long-Run Growth,
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2000036m, MWH)
Yet, historically, economic development has often involved the
expropriation of land and resources from ethno-cultural minorities,
and the reallocation of these resources into the hands of elites. The
widespread establishment of small freehold farms for white settlers
across the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries required
displacing the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw tribes, who
were either killed or forced into marginal land. Dispossession was
official government policy. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in
1830; by 1840 over 50,000 Native Americans had been forcibly relocated
from the American Southwest, opening 25 million acres for settlement
(Thornton 1984). The widely lauded security of property rights enjoyed by
yeoman American farmers in the 19th century (Engerman and Sokoloff 1997,
2002) was made possible by insecure property rights for Native Americans.
At the same time, expropriation of land and resources from
marginalized groups can increase the likelihood of armed conflict.
Insecure property rights are often the source of anti-government
grievances, motivating dispossessed groups to rebel. Chiapas
provides the rest of Mexico with essential resources, including oil, timber,
cattle, corn, sugar, coffee, and beans (Collier and Quaratiello 1999). The
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas throughout the 1990s may be traced
in part to the accelerating loss of communal land tenure rights and
displacement of indigenous groups by more politically connected
local caudillos, who were seeking to exploit these valuable
resources commercially (Collier and Quaratiello 1999; Harvey 2005,
1998).
Economic growth requires the government to allocate

resources to societys elite that leads to instability and
armed conflict
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When heterogeneity of property rights enjoyment is considered, the historical

data shows that property insecurity of ethno-cultural minorities does not
reduce long-run economic development. Economic growth can occur
when the property rights of elites are secure but marginalized
minorities face high a risk of expropriation, because land is
reallocated into the hands of investors with access to capital. At the
same time, the severity of property insecurity for the worst-off
group in a country is strongly correlated with the onset of armed
conflict, suggesting that severe property insecurity for marginalized
minorities tends to precipitate armed conflict. Finally, controlling for
civil war, property insecurity is associated with higher long-run
growth. Taken together these finding suggest that reallocating resources
and property into the hands of more efficient investors through forced
displacement and resettlement is potentially growthenhancing, but this
growth effect is mitigated because property insecurity also generates
conflict, which reduces growth. In other words, property insecurity of
nonelites can be compatible with or even enhance economic growth,
but also encourages conflictwhich can undermine long-run growth
and economic development. Whose property rights are secure and
insecure matters fundamentally for the political and economic implications of
expropriation risk.
Government abuses underlie economic growth that

reverses all gains and makes poverty inevitable PNG
proves
The link between property insecurity, growth and conflict is

apparent in the violent separatist conflict that engulfed Bougainville,
Papua New Guinea (PNG) from 1988- 1997. Traditionally, land in
Bougainville was collectively owned through matrilineal clan
lineages, with use rights shared by all members, and ownership
inalienable and nontransferable. Copper was discovered in
Bougainville in the mid-1960s, and the PNG government claimed the
minerals - selling the Panguna copper mining concession to Bougainville
Copper Ltd., a subsidiary of Rio Tinto Ltd.. The government forcibly
relocated entire villages, and excluded Bougainville from the
revenue-sharing agreements it negotiated with Rio Tinto. The
prioritization of the states and the corporations property rights at
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the expense of the Boungainvilleans initially generated high
economic returns: from 1972 to 1989 the Panguna mine contributed 16% of
Papua New Guinas GDP and 44% of its exports. However, in 1988, the
convergence of grievances regarding the effects of mining, the
inequitable allocation of revenues, and long-standing political
exclusion provoked a group of marginalized Bougainvilleans to
attack a number of Rio Tontos buildings, destroying the mines power
supply. Seeing the economic lifeline of the country as under an
existential threat, and believing a strong preemptive response
would deter further opposition, the PNG government responded
with a military crackdown. The indiscriminate violence polarized the
Bougainvillean population, fueling a widely supported ethnonationalist rebellion with separatist aims. The mine was closed in 1989
due to the uprising and the conflict intensified through the 1990s. By 1996
between 15,000 and 20,000 civilians and combatants had been
killed in the conflict, and another 60,000 people displaced. The war
also resulted in the cessation of all economic activity: roughly 10,000
mining jobs and 10,000 more in the cocoa and copra sectors were lost, and
significant mining and transportation infrastructure destroyed. The
economic impact of the mines closure, the direct costs of the
conflict, and the indirect costs of lost growth opportunities incited a
severe fiscal crisis in PNG by the mid-1990s (Regan 2003). In Bougainville
the growth enhancing prioritization of elites property rights were
undermined by violent conflict.
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Turn Trade Bad

Increasing trade produces asymmetrical relationships
that leads to war
Mansfield and Pollins, 03 (Edward Deering, Hum Rosen Professor of
Political Science, Chair of the Political Science Department, and Director of

the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of
Pennsylvania, Brian M, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio State
University and a Research Fellow at the Mershon Center, Economic
Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring
Debate, University of Michigan Press, http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=L53fR-TusZAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=
%22economic+engagement%22+
%2B+economy&ots=Ew9trq6DvC&sig=9t0FLFv90VxA0Tc4xsiBBrpCYVg#v=o
nepage&q=%22economic%20engagement%22%20%2B
%20economy&f=false, MWH)
However, the liberal view has been criticized by mercantilists and many
realists who insist that unfettered economic exchange can undermine
national security. Albert 0. Hirschman (119451 1980), for example, has
pointed out that the gains from trade often do not accrue to states
proportionately and that the distribution of these gains can affect
interstate power relations.' Shifting power relations, in turn, are
widely regarded as a potent source of military conflict (Gilpin 1981;
Levy 1989; Mearsheirner 199o). In the same vein, the extent to which
trade partners depend on their commercial relationship often varies
substantially among the constituent states. If one partner depends
on a trading relationship much more heavily than another partner,
the costs associated with attenuating or severing the relationship
are far lower for the latter than the for-mer state. Under these
circumstances, trade may do little to inhibit the less dependent state
front initiating hostilities.
Another challenge to the liberal thesis emphasizes that states have
political reasons to minimize their dependence on foreign commerce
and that military expansion offers one way to achieve this end.
Hence, as trade flows and the extent of interdependence increase, so
do the incentives for states to take mili-tary actions to reduce their
economic vulnerability (Gilpin 198440-41; Liber-man 1996). Consistent
with such arguments. Alexander Hamilton asserted in 1796 that protecting
the industrial sector from foreign Competition would enhance the United
States' "security from external danger and give rise to less frequent
interruption of their peace with foreign nations" than open trade policies
(quoted in Earle 1986, 235). Furthermore, as commerce rises, so does the
range of economic issues over which disputes can emerge. In this
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vein, Ken-neth Waltz (1970, 205, 222) maintains that since "close
interdependence means closeness of contact and raises the prospect
of at least occasional conflict ... the [liberal] myth of
interdependence ... asserts a false belief about the conditions that
may promote peace." As such, heightened interdependence may
actually stimulate belligerence. Finally, a wide variety of studies conclude
that international economic rela-tions have no systematic bearing on political
conflict (Buzan 1984; Gilpin 1987; Ripsman and Blanchard 1996-97). Many of
them hold that hostilities stem largely front variations in the distribution of
political-military capabilities and that power relations underlie any apparent
effect of economic exchange on military antagonism. That economic ties
among the major powers were significant prior to World War I but far less
extensive prior to World War II is frequently presented as evidence that such
tics have little systematic impact on armed conflict when core national
interests are at stake.
74

Spending DA (Someone Fix This)

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George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

Link Economic engagement involves spending

(Who Supports Global Economic Engagement? The Sources of Preferences in

George Mason 2012-13

C. Impact Deficit spending causes economic decline

George Mason 2012-13

Economic collapse causes global nuclear war.

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

*** Uniqueness Debate

George Mason 2012-13

US economy increasing steadily- markets and investors

George Mason 2012-13

The economy is up- producer prices and the labor market

US labor market growing faster than expected, spurring

George Mason 2012-13

US stocks set to make record highs again- the economys

(Matt, Stocks Pause After Rally, Wall Street Journal, JH,

The stock markets up all round- many factors

Economy is improving stock market proves

(Inyoung, U.S. Stocks Rebound From Nine-Week Low on Economic Data,

George Mason 2012-13

Even if the US economy is shaky, its doing well compared

George Mason 2012-13

UQ Econ High Stocks

U.S. economy rising; stocks leading the way

George Mason 2012-13

The US economy is on the brink fears of Fed tapering

George Mason 2012-13

No deficit spending now- the government has a surplus

George Mason 2012-13

The governments in surplus- no deficit spending

George Mason 2012-13

(Three Charts That Show America Doesnt Have A Spending Problem,

George Mason 2012-13

UQ Deficit Decreasing Now

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

*** Link Debate

George Mason 2012-13

Link Cuba BizCon

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

Economic engagement involves spending money

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

Link EE Pork Barrel

(The Domestic Politics of Foreign Aid Volume 1 of Routledge Explorations in

George Mason 2012-13

Link Energy Deficit $

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

Link Trade Deficit $

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13

*** Internal Link Debate

George Mason 2012-13

(Matthew, Deficit Spending Displaces Private Economic Growth, US News,

Deficit spending kills the economy it trades off with

George Mason 2012-13

George Mason 2012-13