Economy: Disappointing GDP growth of 2.4% in the second quarter signals that our "recovery" isn't what it's cracked up to be. But then, how could it be when politicians have been trying to kill it for years?

How do you keep an economy from digging itself out of a major recession? One surefire method is massively expanding a government whose major programs are already on their way to bankruptcy, then sitting idly by as major tax increases arrive.

The Democratic Congress has spent a trillion dollars on a failed Keynesian stimulus that promised millions of jobs that never materialized. They added a massive new entitlement in the form of a government takeover of health care when the entitlements already burdening us are going broke. And they are letting the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year.

Why in such a chancy economic environment would investors invest? Why would entrepreneurs take risks? And why would businesses expand and hire new employees? By extension, why would consumers spend?

The normally cautious Conference Board reacted to the tepid second quarter figure by warning that "The post-recession rebound is history." And its forecast was for GDP to "slow even more markedly, to a 1.6% annualized rate in the second half of the year."

The tepid new 2.4% figure follows 3.7% GDP growth in the first quarter of 2010, and 5% growth in last year's fourth quarter.

But the Associated Press's quarterly survey of 42 private, corporate and academic economists, released just last week, finds the numbers crunchers worried on a number of fronts.

The lack of jobs and sinking real estate values mean people are saving for a rainy day, not spending, with one measure of savings hitting its highest level in over a decade.

Also, a majority of the economists don't expect unemployment to fall back down to the historically typical 5% level until 2015 or later.

Excuse us, but where on earth did that trillion dollars in job-creating stimulus go?

It is under these scary conditions that the Bush tax cuts are about to expire. Deutsche Bank last week warned its clients of the "worst-case scenario, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire" accompanied by failing to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax could mean a 1.5% "fiscal drag in 2011 on top of the 1% fiscal drag we expect to occur as the Obama fiscal stimulus package unwinds."

That, the mega-bank concluded, could possibly be enough to "push the economy to a stalling point."

Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana is leading a group of sane Senate Democrats that includes Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut who want to save the Bush tax cuts.

Invoking tax-cutting Democratic President John F. Kennedy, Bayh told CNBC's Larry Kudlow that "the top priority right now needs to be getting this economy growing."

Bayh condemned his party's embrace of class warfare and pointed out that many Americans in the top tax bracket "happen to be small business people — they're the people who are making the investment decisions, making the hiring decisions. The last thing we want to do right now is to reduce their confidence and make them fearful of the future."

These are wise words.

If the president and congressional Democratic leaders won't listen to Republicans on the economy, can't they listen to their fellow Democrats?