Businesses (via surveys) have always complained about regulations, taxes, etc. While some regulations may be burdensome or unrealistic (and lets keep in mind that the federal government isn't responsible for all of them), the fact is a lot of them are sensible.
The one thing that has changed dramatically in surveys from businesses: a lack of demand. when private consumption is down, historically it has been observed that public consumption should pick up to end the cycle.
Even under Regen, states and municipalities received a lot of aid, and the public sector helped to pull up the economy. That's one aspect of a robust economic rebound, which includes an increase in public debt (which, adjusted for inflation, is negative -- i.e., a 10-year Treasury Bill for $1,000 will be worth less in 10 years -- people are paying us to hold onto their money because U.S. is so secure).
The point here is that one party is gone off so far to the right that Congress isn't able to effectively deal with this issue. We have Republicans warning of the dire consequences of sequestration (large cuts) and blaming Democrats for wanting to slightly increase revenue, when all along all the GOP wanted was large cuts...
I could ramble for awhile longer, but I think it's more nuanced than Washington can't fix anything. One party has been taken over by extreme ideologues.
What sort of level of public consumption would be appropriate? Currently the deficit is 10% of GDP. Do you believe it should be 20%?
Edit: (Increase in outstanding public debt)/(GDP) was actually only 8.1% in 2011. Lots of people prefer to define the deficit as "the budget deficit," but this is beyond silly.
I think it's below 10%, to be fair. Anyway, I don't have a number. I'm not an economist. Modern governments need to run deficits during recessions / depressions, and surpluses during good times. Or at least that's what history has shown, including recent history (Ireland, for example).
The modern GOP, however, believe that we have a debt crisis (we don't; the U.S. has held a much higher debt-to-GDP ratio, WWII, over 100%; Japan currently has a much, much higher ratio, like close to 200%). Long term, yes, we have to deal with the debt. Medicare and Medicaid are going to grow a great deal over the coming decades (both programs serve the elderly and disabled to a great extent, a growing population). The Affordable Care Act takes some measures to control the growth of the programs. So does Ryan's plan, although his plan essentially avoids any real work and offloads the cost on citizens, drastically changing Medicare. A good overview here: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106298/guide-to-medicare-debat...
Interestingly enough, while they (the GOP) say we have a debt crisis, they refuse to increase revenue by any means. In fact, they want to lower taxes (one of the largest drivers of debt because of Bush tax cuts v1 and v2), largely for the wealthy (although both Romney and Ryan and the GOP as a whole claim they'll make cuts revenue neutral by ending _unspecified_ loopholes, which, according to the Tax Policy Center (can find link, but it has been in the news) would result in ending loopholes for middle class brackets (i.e. mortgage deduction, etc.).
In short, I don't know a specific answer, but providing aid to states and municipalities would go a long way in picking up growth.
There isn't a government debt crisis but there is a personal and household debt crisis. That is why there is a lack of demand. Government cuts on top will make matters even worse.
If something radical isn't going to be done (such as printing money to pay off household debts - see http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/manifesto/ ) then at least some classical government stimulus borrowing is needed to (partially) compensate for the household sector's debt reduction and soften the landing.
Actually the proposal made is that everyone is given an amount of money but that if you have debts you must pay them down with the money. If you don't have debts you can spend it. So there is no need to stop being fiscally responsible, you will get benefit too if it were to happen (I'm not aware of any politicians even thinking along these lines so I'm not expecting it to happen anyway this quantitative easing for the people looks more sensible to me than the current sort of QE).
It would cause some inflation but that would be largely compensated for by the cash handout.
The main entities that would suffer would be the banks as their balance sheets would shrink as people paid back their debts. The current quantitative easing process of printing money and giving it to the banks isn't really stimulating the economy just keeping asset prices up.
Read some of Steve Keen's stuff, his mathematical model of the economy seems highly plausible to me and he is one of the very few to have modeled and predicted the economic crisis well before it occurred.
The one thing that has changed dramatically in surveys from businesses: a lack of demand. when private consumption is down, historically it has been observed that public consumption should pick up to end the cycle.
Even under Regen, states and municipalities received a lot of aid, and the public sector helped to pull up the economy. That's one aspect of a robust economic rebound, which includes an increase in public debt (which, adjusted for inflation, is negative -- i.e., a 10-year Treasury Bill for $1,000 will be worth less in 10 years -- people are paying us to hold onto their money because U.S. is so secure).
The point here is that one party is gone off so far to the right that Congress isn't able to effectively deal with this issue. We have Republicans warning of the dire consequences of sequestration (large cuts) and blaming Democrats for wanting to slightly increase revenue, when all along all the GOP wanted was large cuts...
I could ramble for awhile longer, but I think it's more nuanced than Washington can't fix anything. One party has been taken over by extreme ideologues.