"This has been a key theme of 2011: For reasons that defy any of the signals we’re seeing in the actual economy, Congress — and, for much of the year, the president — has been obsessed with finding a deal on deficit reduction and relatively resigned on policies to create jobs. In part, that’s simply because the Republicans in Congress were (and are) staunchly opposed to further stimulus but seemed willing to work with Democrats on the deficit, and the political system prefers to focus on things it can do rather than things it can’t. In part, it’s because, for most of the year, Democrats were willing to go along with Republicans who wanted to talk about the deficit rather than job creation measures — note that they didn’t, for example, demand, as part of the debt-ceiling deal, that the supercommittee also come up with jobs proposals. But the end result has been very weird, like watching the doctors of a patient with acute pneumonia spend a year discussing the best way for the patient to lose weight."
