The U.S. can expect better economic policies no matter who is elected the next president, because Americans are tired of government solutions to their problems, according to Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust.
Wesbury is himself no fan of the government as savior.
"Economic growth is always slow after a financial crisis," he wrote on the
First Trust blog. "But the real reason is that politicians from both major parties keep throwing more government 'solutions' at problems."
According to Wesbury, the slow-growth impact of government is easy to pinpoint in America.
He noted free markets, not government, have driven the success of fracking, and profitable high-tech innovations such as 3-D printing, the cloud, smartphones and apps.
"But, where government interfered in the most overt ways — in labor markets and in housing — the recovery has been much slower," he wrote.
"And government is using the Amazon model of 'spend to grow' in alternative energy production, hoping that losses today equal benefits tomorrow. This may be true, but at least Amazon is spending its own money and the stock market votes every day on whether it is a good idea or not."
Wesbury noted a recent Politico poll showed most Americans of both parties feel things in the U.S. are "out of control," and polls show both President Obama and Congress with extremely low popularity. The translation, according to his thinking, is that the status quo has already seen its sell-by date.
He predicted that regardless of who is elected president in 2016, they will want to reform the tax code and Obamacare, among other programs.
"In other words, the next president is likely to be more market friendly than the current one," Wesbury predicted. "The American people won't have it any other way. Look for evidence of this shift as the results of the mid-term elections pour in next week."
In an opinion column for
USA Today, Erskine Bowles, former co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and co-founder of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, said lawmakers are not off the hook just because of a temporary decline in the federal deficit for 2014.
"Congress and the administration have avoided acting on the tough stuff," Bowles wrote. "As a result, the economy limps forward, and the deficit is projected to return to an upward path over the rest of the decade and beyond."
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