When Obama took the throne and began his imitation of the first American dictator, the economy had turned sour. But recessions typically last 18 months, in this country, not three stinking years. Obama believed that the economy would make the corrections and rebound, on its own. We all believed that. To be sure, his rhetoric did not reflect this fact, but his actions did. That is why he used his absolute control of Congress to craft a trillion dollar "stimulus" that allocated only 3.5% of its funds to temporary projects and billions upon billions to his union buds and his big money campaign constituencies. What a deal !! He could save the unions, drowning in their own glut of legacy extravagance, pay back his "friends," and get credit for saving the economy, as well.
So, why did the economy fail to respond? Well, we have ObamaCare - a bill that added thousands of dollars to small business expenses, a bill that will not be fully written until 2014 !! So business said, "Maybe we should wait on expansion until Washington finishes writing this new law." Then came the FinReg legislation (also passed in 2009), the most sweeping financial regulator "upgrade" in history, another bill that will not be fully written until 2013 and, business said, "Maybe we have two very important reasons for waiting to see just how punitive this redistributive, big government spender is going to be." Then came the Obama decision to bypass congress and use the FCC, FTC, the EPA, OSHA, and the DOJ to press for its "legislative" agenda by fiat. And, business said, "That's it !! We cannot expand and invest and increase payrolls until this idiot goes away."
Contrast this to Clinton and "W."
Clinton cut corporate taxes and, guess what, it worked. He stood over (along with a Republican congress)the most prosperous economy in modern times. George W Bush (who also "inherited" a recession and 9/11) cut taxes and, guess what, revenues increased by 43% as he stood over the second most prosperous economy in history. Few people know that Bush economic policies provided for a record 52 consecutive months of growth in GDP. Including the recession years of 2001 and 2008, the unemployment rate under Bush averaged 5.3% .
Going back to Reagan, at this point in the recession, Reagan was seeing a 7% increase in GDP while our first quarter (2011) growth rate for GDP was an embarrassing .04% . Newly unemployed benefit claims are coming in at 1.6 million per month (398,000 last week, alone) and unemployment totals are somewhere around 19% of the nation's work force and these numbers have been the case for going on three years
Gallup has Obama at a record low of 40% approval. Understand this, Obama is not running against Boehner in 2012. The fact is this: he has lost ground in all voting demographics including Blacks. He won in 2008 by only 7% of the popular vote. As things stand today, he would lose in an embarrassing landslide. I was one of the first to say this, to document the "demographic disaster" that is gathering around Obama's presidency - more than a year ago. That was my story, then, and I am sticking to it, today.
He is a slow learning academic with no practical private sector experience. He is not a smart man, politically speaking. Even his liberal base is running from him.
Like Peggy Noonan wrote in the WSJ, this past week, " . . . . he is a loser." And,
Nobody likes a loser.
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