The False Obama Economic Narrative

Let's make this IBD piece a featured "stand-alone" newsbite!

It's a standard Obama talking point.

At a campaign rally, Obama said Romney is "just churning out the same ideas that we saw in the decade before I took office . . . the same tax cuts and deregulation agenda that helped get us into this mess in the first place."

But it's not true.

Bush's tax cuts did not cause the last recession. In fact, once they were fully in effect in 2003, they sparked stronger growth — generating more than 8 million new jobs over the next four years, and GDP growth averaging close to 3%.

YEP. AS I'VE NOTED MANY TIMES, EVEN IF YOU THROW THE WORD "LUCK" OUT THERE IN TERMS OF THE TIMING, I TRULY BELIEVE THAT HAD THE TAX CUTS NOT BEEN IN PLACE, THE EVENTS OF 9/11/2001 WOULD HAVE LED TO A MUCH WORSE LONGTERM FINANCIAL CRISIS THAN WE ACTUALLY SUFFERED. CAN I PROVE IT? NO... MAYBE NOT... BUT I CAN POINT TO THE ACTUAL HISTORY... WHAT HAPPENED... AND IN THAT HISTORICAL CONTEXT MY ANALYSIS SEEMS TO BE BORNE OUT.

Those tax cuts didn't explode the deficit, either, as Obama frequently claims. Deficits steadily declined after 2003, until the recession hit.

(*SHRUG*)

AND, FOLKS... REMEMBER... I WAS SO DISGUSTED BY RINOs IN CONGRESS AND BUSH'S EARLY SECOND TERM PERFORMANCE THAT I BUGGED OUT, RE-REGISTERED AS A DEMOCRAT, AND VOTED DEMOCRAT IN 2006 IN ORDER TO FIRE MY RINO CONGRESSWOMAN OF THE TIME!

MY POINT? EVEN AS DEFICITS WERE DECLINING, WE WERE STILL SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY... BORROWING TOO MUCH MONEY... UNDER BUSH AND THE RINOs!

THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEMS? THEY'VE SPENT MORE THAN BUSH AND THE RINOs EVER EVEN IMAGINED SPENDING...!!! THEY DOUBLED DOWN... TRIPLED DOWN... QUADRUPLED DOWN... ON EVERYTHING THAT WAS BAD ABOUT BUSH/RINO SPENDING!

Nor was Bush a deregulator.

Conservative Heritage Foundation's regulation expert James Gattuso concluded, after reviewing Bush's record, that "regulation grew substantially during the Bush years."

YEP. I'VE COVERED THIS MANY TIMES.

Even the Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, gave Obama's claim three out of four "Pinocchios," saying "it is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters."

(*SHRUG*)

Another frequent Obama claim is that "we did all the right things to prevent a Great Depression."

(*SNORT*)

But this, too, is false.

The economy had pretty much hit bottom by the time Obama took office, and long before his policies were in place. The worst declines in monthly GDP and employment, in fact, occurred before he was even sworn in.

BUT APART FROM THAT, BUSHBAMA DID THE WRONG THING WITH TARP! YES... BUSH WAS WRONG... AND OBAMA SUPPORTED BUSH'S... er.. "WRONGNESS" ON TARP. SO DID MCCAIN. SO DID HILLARY.

(*SHRUG*)

AS FOR THE FAILED PORK-PACKED "STIMULUS," THAT WAS ALL OBAMA... ALL DEMOCRATS (WHO CONTROLLED BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS).

In his recent two-minute campaign ad, Obama claimed that "as a nation we are moving forward again."

WE'RE ON THE WRONG TRACK, FOLKS; COM'ON... YOU KNOW THIS.

But while the overall economy has grown somewhat since Obama's recovery started more than three years ago, several other important indicators have actually gone backward.

INFLATION COUNTS AS "GROWTH" FOLKS. NEVER FORGET THAT.

(*SHRUG*)

WASTE COUNTS AS "GROWTH" FOLKS - AS LONG AS MONEY IS SPENT... REGARDLESS OF WHETHER IT'S WASTED... REGARDLESS OF LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES AND DEBT GROWTH.

(*ANOTHER SHRUG*)

Median household incomes, for example, have dropped $3,000 — a 5.7% decline — since the Obama recovery started.

AND WHEN YOU FACTOR IN INFLATION... THE REAL EFFECT IS MUCH, MUCH WORSE.

Income inequality has reached new heights.

YEP. OBAMA'S POLICIES HAVE HELPED WALL STREET FAR MORE THAN MAIN STREET.

There are 659,000 more long-term unemployed than there were in June 2009, and the share of people working has dropped to levels not seen in 30 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

FOLKS... THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE! THESE ARE THE FIGURES THAT TELL YOU WHAT'S GOING ON!

Meanwhile, there are 11.8 million more people on food stamps and nearly 2.7 million more in poverty than when the Obama recovery started.

WELL... POVERTY CAN BE "DEFINED" AND THEREFORE "REDEFINED" SO AS TO SHRINK OR GROW, BUT THE FOOD STAMP NUMBERS... THEY'RE REAL... AND THEY'RE OUTRAGEOUS. FAR, FAR, FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE SUCKING ON THE GOVERNMENT TIT.

And while Obama likes to tout the fact that 4 million net new jobs have been created since February 2010, what he doesn't say is that most of those are low-wage jobs that replaced better-paying jobs lost during the recession.

YEP. (AGAIN... DAILY LONGTIME READERS OF USUALLY RIGHT AND MY NEWSBITES KNOW WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON... AND IT'S NOT PRETTY.)

One of Bill Clinton's biggest applause lines at the Democratic convention was when he said that "no president — not me or any of my predecessors — could have repaired all the damage in just four years."

But historically, deeper recessions have been followed by faster recoveries.

AND BEYOND THAT... JEEZ... ANYONE WHO LIVED THROUGH THE CARTER vs. REAGAN YEARS KNOWS THAT CLINTON IS FULL OF SHIT! REAGAN TURNED THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' ECONOMY AROUND WITHIN ONE TERM! I WAS THERE! MY BUDDY... er... "LATRINA" WAS THERE!

"You can't find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery," is how Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital, put it in August 2009.

HEY, "LATRINA," HAS THE NYT OR HUFFPOST EVER POINTED THIS OUT? (JUST CURIOUS...)

To get a sense of how dismal Obama's recovery has been, consider this: Since World War II, there have been 10 recoveries before Obama's. Had Obama's merely performed as well the average of all those recoveries, the nation's GDP would be a staggering $1.2 trillion bigger than it is today, and 7.9 million more people would have jobs.

(*SHRUG*)