Dire consequences: the conservative recapture of America's political narrative?

The severity of the financial meltdown in September 2008 was such as to trigger major innovations in US public policy, including the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Quantitative Easing, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The greater public spending associated with many of these changes was initially widely supported, but has now become the subject of sustained criticism from conservative economists and politicians whose self-confidence has rapidly recovered from the blow initially rendered to it by the financial meltdown. After the 2010 midterm elections, with control of the House of Representatives returned to fiscally conservative Republican legislators, deficit reduction emerged as the dominant issue in Washington politics, constraining the capacity of the White House to effectively pursue further stimulus spending. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.