Budget cutbacks slowing economy

WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy’s weaker-than-expected growth in the first three months of this year renewed concerns Friday that the nation’s fragile recovery might stall. Much of the drag against growth reported Friday came from falling government spending.

The U.S. economy expanded at a sluggish 2.2 percent annual rate from January through March, the Commerce Department said. Most forecasters had expected growth in the 2.5 to 3 percent range. Although the headline number for the gross domestic product – the sum of goods and services produced in the U.S. economy – came up short of expectations, the report’s component parts offered rays of hope.

Consumption remained strong in a recovering private sector, and the long-troubled housing sector appeared to be rising from the doldrums. Still, the broader GDP number was dragged down by a 3 percent drop in government spending during the first quarter, driven by an 8.1 percent decline in defense spending.

The private-sector economy grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter, according to Alan Krueger, the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

When combined with the steep losses of jobs in federal, state and local governments, Friday’s GDP numbers raise questions about the course of federal budget policies that will be argued throughout this presidential election year. While Democrats call for deeper cuts in military spending and Republicans want to reduce spending on social programs, both options would slow the already struggling U.S. economy.

Late this year and again next year, lawmakers in Washington are expected to try to curb future spending growth in an effort to narrow yawning budget deficits and soaring federal debt. The federal deficit – what the government spends beyond what it collects – was $1.3 trillion for the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2011. The national debt totals $15.6 trillion.

The good news is that the first-quarter drop in defense spending isn’t expected to continue for the rest of this year – but over a longer time horizon, it must.

“The big declines in defense outlays won’t continue, but it does highlight the head winds from what will be a long period of declining government spending,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for forecaster Moody’s Analytics.

Meanwhile, the economy continues to show growth.

“This isn’t boom times, but it is enough to generate enough jobs to push unemployment slowly lower,” Zandi said. “Having said this, growth in the quarter was less than expected, mostly because of sharp declines in defense spending and weak business investment.”

The real disappointment in Friday’s report was a drop in business fixed investment of 2.1 percent and in spending on business structures of a whopping 12 percent. Spending on equipment was up by only a weak 1.7 percent, which partly reflects the end of a tax break for business investment last year.

The weak business spending stood in stark contrast to a 2.9 percent increase in personal consumption expenditures. Consumers spent more even as income growth remained fairly flat.