For the past several elections, the two duked it out to represent the 7th Congressional District with Walberg winning the last round in 2010.
Despite being drawn out of his congressional district under the GOP-drawn maps, Schauer was upbeat about the new 7th District, because, he says, the swing district is now half a percentage point more Democratic.
"I don't think Tim Walberg should get comfortable in his office," said Schauer, who now stumps for the Blue Green Alliance.
The new 7th doesn't include Schauer's home base of Battle Creek. Instead, Calhoun County is part of the 3rd District, a Republican stronghold represented by tea-party backed freshman Rep. Justin Amash of Cascade Township in Kent County. The new 7th extends eastward to pick up Monroe County, now represented by Democrat Rep. John Dingell .
"What Republicans in Lansing did was, they sort of dared me to run. They knew that I would have to move to do it and sacrifice my family to do that, but in doing that they actually drew a district that's a little more Democratic."
Their critiques have grown sharper since last week, when President Obama signed his deficit reduction deal with Republicans and, a few days later, when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States.
But even before that, macroeconomists and private sector forecasters were warning that the direction in which the new House Republican majority had pushed the White House and Congress this year — for immediate spending cuts, no further stimulus measures and no tax increases, ever — was wrong for addressing the nation’s two main ills, a weak economy now and projections of unsustainably high federal debt in coming years.
Instead, these critics say, Washington should be focusing on stimulating the economy in the near term to induce people to spend money and create jobs, while settling on a long-term plan for spending cuts and tax increases to take effect only after the economy recovers.
But Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail refuse to back down.
Economists disagree about the proper balance between spending cuts and tax increases in reducing a government’s debts. Some studies by both liberal and conservative economists suggest that emphasizing spending cuts is better for long-term growth. But there are few if any precedents for paying down such a large debt solely through spending cuts.
Along with annual caps on discretionary spending for domestic and military programs that ended up in the final deal, Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner were also exploring short-term stimulus measures and, for the long term, revenue increases and future savings from Social Security and from the Medicare and Medicaid programs, whose growing costs are stoking projections of mounting debt. But Mr. Boehner quit the talks over taxes. And until Republicans budge on revenue, Democrats refuse to consider entitlement cuts.
Of course, Republicans can point to support among some conservative economists. John B. Taylor, a professor at Stanford and an adviser to Republican presidents and presidential candidates, said in an interview that temporary stimulus measures were counterproductive, and for long-term debt reduction, “I would try very hard to make it work without revenues.”
But Mr. Feldstein, who was chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, was among the first in 2008 to call for stimulus spending and recently has advocated raising revenue. He would do so by limiting “tax expenditures,” the costly tax breaks for corporations and individuals that include the mortgage-interest deduction — an idea recommended in December by a majority of Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission and lately by the president.
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Congress should renew for another year two measures that expire after 2011 — payroll tax relief for employees and extended unemployment compensation — as Mr. Obama has proposed. If either expired, Mr. Zandi said, that could shave roughly a half-percentage point from economic growth next year.
Republicans are resistant. And Democrats are too cowed to counter much, given polls that show many Americans believe Mr. Obama’s 2009-10 stimulus package did not work, despite studies to the contrary.
A Democratic Congressional adviser, granted anonymity to discuss party deliberations, said: “We’re at a loss to figure out a way to articulate the argument in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”
In a column in The Washington Post on Friday, Bill Gross, who runs the giant bond-trading firm Pimco, lashed out at Republicans and “co-opted Democrats” for setting aside widely accepted economic theory.
“An anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking,” he wrote. “Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not.
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