When it comes to the economy, the housing market, and the Obama administration’s policies, it’s Groundhog Day all over again, according to economists speaking at the the Quarterly Economic Roundtable Series hosted by the National Chamber Foundation, the U.S.Chamber’s public policy think tank.

“During the president’s State of the Union address, we heard how the economy is improving, and in a sense, it is,” said U.S. Chamber Chief Economist Marty Regalia. Despite modest fourth quarter growth of 2.8%, however, the U.S. economy grew only 1.7% growth for the entire year, well below 3% growth in 2010, Regalia noted.

Regalia predicts modest economic growth in the foreseeable future, ranging from 2.5% to 3.0%, which is simply “not fast enough” to bring down an unemployment rate that hovered above 9% most of 2011. “The economy will continue to grow, but well below its long-term potential,” he said.

While unemployment rates dropped to 8.5% in December, there’s been a big decline in the labor force participation rate, which has declined 2% since the recession began, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “The question is, how many of them will come back?”

One bright spot is the housing market, which has seen a recent stabilization in mortgage foreclosures and a couple of months of improvement in the sales of new and existing single family home sales, said David Crowe, Chief Economist, National Association of Home Builders. In addition, confidence among U.S. homebuilders rose in January to the highest level in more than four years. But, Crowe said, “We’re still a long ways off from builders feeling optimistic.”

Crowe predicts 700,000 housing starts in 2012; housing starts fell short of 600,000 in 2011.

To build on the economic momentum generated in the fourth quarter, Washington needs to put long-term, pro-growth policies in place, said Holtz-Eakin, including reforming the tax code and bringing down rates and encouraging savings and investment in infrastructure, education, and defense. Temporary targeted measures that pick parts of the economy to stimulate is not a policy for growth, he said. “I don’t think the politics are allowing for good policy, and we’re paying for that in terms of debts and deficits,” Holtz-Eakin said.

His comments come a day after data released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office suggested that President Obama’s fiscal policies have increased the federal debt by about $5 trillion. The CBO reports that annual spending over the Obama era has climbed to a projected $3.6 trillion this fiscal year from $2.98 trillion in fiscal 2008, or more than 20%. The government spending burden has averaged 24% of GDP, up from an average of about 20%.