First it was a fiscal ‘cliff.’ Now it’s a ‘steep slope.’

Nov 06, 2012 | 04:49 PM | Jo Isenberg

Tags  U.S. ecnomy, deficit reduction, sequestration, NAM, National Association of Manuacturers, Jeff Werling, Jay Timmons, U.S. deficit NEMA

Sooner or later, everyone pays the proverbial piper. So why should the U.S. economy be any different?

In a 25-page report released 66 days before the American economy is ticketed to dive over a fiscal cliff—and 10 days before the presidential election—the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) went a step beyond sizing up the toll the mandated across-the-board spending cuts and federal tax increases could take on the national economy and insisted instead that the damage has already begun.

The report, titled Fiscal Shock: America’s Economic Crisis, was authored by Jeff Werling, executive director of Inforum, the Interindustry Forecasting Project at the University of Maryland, and a international and industry economist, who served previous stints with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI). Werling uses what he describes as Inforum’s LIFT model to derive an estimate of the magnitude and timing of the economic impact of allowing the scheduled spending cuts and tax increases to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, as scheduled. ....