Fusion senior editor Felix Salmon joined “Midterm Mayhem” hosts Kal Penn and Nando Vila to discuss how the change in Senate leadership will affect the economy. The economy has actually shown decent numbers lately in terms of GDP and unemployment, Salmon said, but thanks to three decades of trickle-down economic policy, the bottom 90 percent of earners have seen barely a sliver of the profits.
“For most people, they’re not feeling this recovery,” Salmon said. “Everything that’s happened in this country since 1982 or thereabouts has been about making the rich richer and giving money to people with money.”
So what’s going to happen in the next two years, now that the GOP controls both the House and Senate?
“Exactly same thing as if we had a Democratic-controlled Congress,” Salmon said. “We’ve achieved exactly nothing in Congress in the first two years of this presidency, we’re going to achieve exactly nothing in the second two years.”
But – surprisingly – the continuing political gridlock is not necessarily bad news, at least for the economy.
“The markets are probably going to be happy,” Salmon said. “Markets, weirdly, tend to like gridlock, they don’t like the government meddling in the economy.”