Echoing his testimony in the Senate, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee Tuesday that Congress has to weigh the trade off between addressing the long-term debt and preserving the economic recovery.
Elmendorf said the type of recession that the U.S. is emerging from separates it from others in the past century that bounced back relatively quickly. The breakdown of the financial system due to excesses takes time to rebuild, Elmendorf said.
“This pattern, although unusually for U.S. post-war history, is unfortunately not uncommon for other countries that have experiences recessions following financial crisis,” Elmendorf said.
The unemployment rate is not supposed to level out to 5.3 percent until midway through the decade, according to the CBO.
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wi.) noted that that the year and a half following the recession, employment rose .06 percent, compared to 4.4 percent in past recessions. He said that job growth and the economy have risen slowly because of a fundamental flaw in the recovery plan.
“We cannot tax, borrow and spend our way to a prosperous future,” Ryan said.
Ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Republicans have been dishonest in their plan to cut the debt, citing the extension of Bush-era tax cuts and a potential repeal of medicare that is estimated to raise the debt by $1.4 trillion over 20 years.