Delaware Liberal like facts and we like pretty pictures, consequently we love graphs. Daniel Gross at Slate did a fine piece on the failings of the US Chamber of Commerce:
But there is a fundamental reason why the chamber isn’t being invited into the rooms where legislation and policy are being made these days: It doesn’t have much to offer. For generations, the Chamber of Commerce has held itself out as the sensible, we-know-better voice of business: Follow the policies we—i.e. American business—approve and advocate, and the nation will grow and prosper. We’ll have more jobs, higher wages, rising asset values, and widely shared prosperity.
But here’s the thing. From 2001 to 2008, the nation listened. It elected and then put into place exactly the policies the chamber advocated. And the chamber utterly failed to deliver.
Matthey Yglesias combined the Slate piece with the following chart from J. Bradford DeLong’s Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles that shows the freaking hole we are trying to dig out of. Conversely, if keep on listening to the Republicans, we might dig our way to China
