Washington has its focus on the wrong target, says former top White House economic adviser Larry Summers, now a Harvard professor.

While policymakers are obsessed with cutting the budget deficit, they should be working to boost growth, he tells The Wall Street Journal.

The deficit shrank to $680 billion, or 4.1 percent of GDP, in the year ended Sept. 30 from $1.1 trillion, 6.8 percent of GDP, a year earlier. Economic growth averaged 2.1 percent in the first three quarters of the year.

Editor’s Note: Obama’s Budget Takes Aim at Retired Americans

"We've had 10 bipartisan budget processes. We've had zero bipartisan growth processes," Summers told The Journal. "We've had budget summits up the yin-yang. We've had no growth summits."

The deficit issue already is heading in the right direction, Summers says. "On the current forecast, the debt-to-GDP ratio will improve over the next decade," he said.

In addition, "if you take the longest-run deficit and take the official forecasts, if we increase the growth rate by two-tenths of 1 percent, you solve the entire identified fiscal-gap problem," Summers said.

"If we get the growth rate up, the debt problem will stay in control."

In terms of growth forecasts, a Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank survey of 42 economists, shows they expect growth of 1.8 percent this quarter, down from their prior estimate of 2.3 percent, Reuters reports.

For the first quarter of 2014, they see growth of 2.5 percent, down from their previous prediction of 2.7 percent.

For all of 2013, the economists project growth of 1.7 percent, and for 2014, growth of 2.6 percent.

Editor’s Note: Obama’s Budget Takes Aim at Retired Americans

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