Obama's Disastrous Jobs Record Makes George W. Bush Look Godlike
Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, September 3, 2010, 8:26 AM
So much for that Recovery Summer…
The Obama economy lost 283,000 jobs in last three months.
THE REALITY – BIG GOVERNMENT TAX & SPEND POLICIES CRIPPLE THE ECONOMY
Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus package failed.
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi tripled the national deficit last year by nearly a trillion dollars – something unheard of in our nation’s history.
After an unheard of record deficit last year of $1.4 Trillion the economy is on track to experience a $1.3 Trillion deficit this year.
The democratic-media complex wants you to believe that this was Bush’s fault.
It’s a lie.
THE TRUTH – TAX CUTS GROW THE ECONOMY.
During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.
Not only were more jobs lost after the 9-11 attacks in 2001 than in the 2008 market crash, but more jobs were created by President Bush’s pro-business policies and tax cuts than by the Obama-Pelosi “spend your way to hell” Keynesian failure.
The Foundry reported, via HotAir:
For objective observers the failure of President Obama’s $862 billion stimulus has become increasingly difficult to deny. But not for the White House. Last week, Vice President Joe Biden told Charlie Rose on PBS that the stimulus was “an absolute success.” Betraying a common perception about unemployment, Biden told Rose: “[W]e lost 8 million brand new jobs … since … 8 million brand new jobs since we hit the skids. On top of the 6% that were already unemployed. It took us several years to get there, it is going to take several years to get back to that number.” That is not quite true. In fact, the American economy has shed 55.4 million jobs since the recession began in the First Quarter of 2008. But at the same time the economy has only added 46.5 million jobs. Putting the two together produces the net approximate 8 million jobs lost that Biden referenced.
But isn’t net jobs all that really matters? Why should anyone care exactly how many jobs were lost and created since all that really matters is the net number of Americans who are no longer employed? Here’s why: despitean unemployment high of just 6.4%, more jobs were lost in the first seven quarters of the 2001 recession than were lost in the first seven quarters of this recession. How is that possible? How could job losses have been worse in 2001 but unemployment so much higher now? Weak job creation. The latest Bureau of Labor and Statistics data show that employers have created 8.6 million fewer new jobs this time around than they did almost a decade ago. Heritage Senior Labor Policy Analyst James Sherk estimates that lower job creation accounts for 65 percent of the recession’s decreased employment.
Our nation’s unemployment rate is hovering near 10% not because of record job losses, as Biden suggests, but because of record job non-creation. Private sector employers have gone on strike. Contrary to what the President’s economic wizards and New York Times columnists believe, massive government deficit spending does not stimulate job creation. President Obama does not have a secret vault of money he can just throw at the American people. The resources the government spends come from the economy. When the government increases spending, it crowds out the resources that business owners could have invested in their enterprises. Private investment falls sharply when government spending rises. According to Sherk, annual private fixed nonresidential investment has fallen by $327 billion since the recession started— a 19 percent drop. Less private investment means less hiring.
And then there is the rest of the Obama agenda that has created, and is creating, significant economic uncertainty: Obamacare, EPA carbon regulations, financial regulations and impending tax hikes. Renouncing these policies, and canceling the rest of the stimulus, would do more to spur private sector job creation than anything this White House has done so far.
If the Boy Wonder really wanted to create jobs, he’d call George W. Bush again.
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sliderblaze commented:
Take a bow O, and not the kind you five to world leaders either
Ruebacca commented:
How can you invest in an economy when your rights and contracts are violated by this administration?
We are all GM bond holders now. ie screwed.
Illinois Patriot commented:
It’s going just as “The Won” and his puppet masters envisioned.
Barack Hussein Obama…..Mmmmmm,Mmmmmm,Mmmmmm
jainphx commented:
Over the years the left has gotten away with the lets tax the rich scam, because no one would stand up and call it the lie that it is.
Taxes are on income and in that sense doesn’t affect the wealthy only those that draw a pay check. The Kennedy’s can holler about taxing the rich, because all their money is safe from taxation. Kennedy with all his billions paid taxes on his Senate pay and there is no inheritance tax all their money is in trust.
Try going down on the street corner and asking the guy bumming money for a job. I find the class warfare that the left always raises to be insulting, but they seem to get away with it.
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Kemo Sabe commented:
Barack “Wrecking ball” Obama doesn’t want new private sector jobs…..he wants mass dependency, that’s why he says we’re headed in the right direction.
DukeofWellington commented:
Bush’s job numbers WERE godlike! Especially in the wake of 9/11. He did everything to keep the economy afloat even though airline-related industries were hit hard and going out of business. His tax cuts worked and the revenues were so great that the deficit was reduced. If GWB had had two more years, we might have been running a surplus. However, thanks to Soros and Obama, a bit of market manipulation and a severely senior Bush moment caused Dubya to abandon market principles in favor of a bailout. Had it not been for that, we would have been fine going into the next presidency.
SeniorD commented:
The Demodonks really mean ‘let’s tax the wannabe rich’ since they seem to have scammed exceedingly high incomes out of the already over-taxed people.
W is not the right person to call, the Oval Office Temp should have a seance to contact Ronald Reagan, John Locke and Adam Smith.
ProLifer commented:
Beyond the point of recovery. Prepare for the worst — it is only months away.
mark commented:
Two surprises for me this morning:
1. I’m still surprised unemployment reporting is still showing under 10%. They are cooking the books but it’s surprising they have been able to cook them under 10% for so long. When will that lid blow?
2. Christine Romer–one of the economic advisors that Obama selected, is/was a full professor at UC Berkeley! She doesn’t know a damn thing about real-world economics and she’s “teaching” our kids how the world works? And people pay for that?
kato commented:
This posting just proves how easy it is to lie with statistics.
Please let’s not hold up George W. Bush as some sort of economic good guy. He signed every pork-laden bill that came across his desk, he expanded the size and scope of federal government like no one since LBJ, he started an expensive war in Iraq and muddled through it badly for almost four years before The Surge.
Let’s not arbitrarily leave out Bush’s performance in 2008. The performance of Bush’s economic gurus Paulson and Geithner during the “crash” borders on the shameful. The first non-stimulus stimulus came from the Bush administration.
The real-estate bubble occurred under the Bush administration, even as Bush, like his predecessor, talked up the virtues of universal home ownership. As Fannie and Freddie began heading for implosion, Bush revived the FHA, and now that agency will be costing taxpayers billions.
Much of the economic growth cited above came as a result of property owners mortgaging themselves to the hilt, using every penny of equity in their homes to splurge like spoiled teenagers. Obama did, in fact, inherit that problem from his predecessor, even though it apparently hasn’t taught him any lessons.
The stock market for the Bush decade was one of the worst on record if you weren’t a Goldman Sachs banker.
How many millions of prudent retirees who eschew the volatile markets and put their money in safe CDs have seen their interest income plummet by 80-90 percent thanks to near-zero interest rates? That’s another gift from the Bush years. Free money to speculators, while the prudent suffer.
George W. Bush: inarticulate, big-government compassionate dope.
Bush only looks good in comparison to the guy who succeeded him.
Joanne commented:
In the news, Obama is now talking about another stimulus, but it won’t be as big as the last one – say what? He is intent on destroying America’s economy as quickly as possible.
jomojava the infidel commented:
al-Bama has to be quite pleased.
The Cloward-Piven strategy is working to perfection.
Robert commented:
The explosion in government spending coupled with the anti-business and anti-American rhetoric and regulatory actions are nuking the American economy.
This administration is poisoning America. The only question is how bad it will be and how long, or if, we will be able to recover.
The Republican response is still weak and sporadic. There is no sustained rhetoric that is representative of any alternative to the ongoing socialist takeover.
Oldpuppymax commented:
Tax cuts ALWAYS result in more private sector employment and greater income to the US treasury. But they also result in less dependence upon Big Brother and therefore less POWER for the ruling class in DC. And therefore…..
kato commented:
Speaking of regulation, Sarbanes-Oxley, one of the most costly regulatory burdens ever placed upon business, was passed during the Bush years. Since then, several dozen foreign companies, most recently Daimler, have delisted their shares from the NYSE.
For all the hundreds of billions that businesses have spent complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, it won’t prevent any future crashes or shareholder losses because stupid, inefficient government remains the watchdog.
One thing Bush did do right: the tax reprieve on corporate earnings abroad. Hundreds of billions were repatriated during that one year, and the government had a huge tax windfall even at the lowered rates.
Still, the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rates in the world, hardly conducive to economic growth.
kato commented:
Robert:
You are right. The Clueless Party’s response is pretty bad, probably because it would be doing the same thing the Democrats are doing, only more moderately.
The RINO method is to take a bill that, say, would add $10 billion to the taxpayer burden and create a new intrusion into the workings of the market. Along come the RINOS blustering about fiscal responsibility. They get the price of the bill down to $9.8 billion, sign it, then brag about what a bunch of conservatives they are. The bureaucracy created by the bill will grow like Topsy in subsequent years, and some RINO president bogged down in foreign wars will sign any pork-laden bill that keeps that bureaucracy alive and growing.
My outgoing senator, George RINOvich actually called for raising taxes on gasoline last week, a good indication of how utterly clueless most Republicans are. The money, of course, would be used to repair roads and bridges. Where the hell did the money from that pork-laden $600 billion transportation bill (signed by George W. Bush) go, one wonders?
Kevin P commented:
Jamie Allman on 97.1 in St. Louis is right – he calls Obama “the jobs assassin”.
chuck in st paul commented:
Trolls bring in, “But Reagan tripled the debt…” in 3… 2… 1…
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“Bush only looks good in comparison to the guy who succeeded him.”
Yes and no. As far as the bubble occurring on his watch – no. It burst on his watch. W and a bipartisan group from Congress went to Congress 17 times to try and rein in Fanny and Freddie. The Bubble was bulding right from the beginning of the CRA and that dates back to Carter for goodness sakes. Add to that expansive monetary policy which did occur on his watch (and others) and… well we are living with the results.
As far as “The War” as a culprit… no. The cost of eight years of war is stated at about 780 billion. Sir Golfsalot and the Pelosi/Reid cabal signed a $787 billion stimulous package in one year. During the war years unemployment was around 5 to 5.5 percent, now about 10 percent (officially, but not really). Growth in GDP was 3.5 to 5%, now barely 1.5%. Etc., etc.
Sen. Fuller Bull - D commented:
Now, he can feel our pain by going off on another expensive vacation. His work is done.
Ang commented:
Sorry this is off topic, but… surely the most liberal idiot in the world cannot think that he needs to go on another 4 day weekend. They would have to be lying to themselves. Camp David is better spot than say Spain as far as a working vacation but the “optics” of this have to be bad to everyone. I think in the next week his approval rating is going to nose dive and then things could get really hairy.
Spider commented:
You will never get these liberal weasals to admit they are wrong and their economic policies have bankrupted us.
You can’t tax and spend your way to wealth.
Until the government gets out of the way we are doomed to recession like un-employment and anemic stock market growth.
Who in their right mind wants to invest in this insanity?
Sen. Fuller Bull - D commented:
You will never get these liberal weasals to admit they are wrong and their economic policies have bankrupted us.
You can’t tax and spend your way to wealth.
Until the government gets out of the way we are doomed to recession like un-employment and anemic stock market growth.
Who in their right mind wants to invest in this insanity?
———————-
As long as a majority of Americans are miserable rather than a few, they are happy and consider their policies a success.
Arch commented:
Chuck:
Is the $780B number you quoted the sum of the Afghan and Iraq Wars or just Iraq?
I suspect it’s the cumulative cost of the military requests in Supplemental Appropriations Acts from 2003 through 2009. If so, the number may be okay. There were a lot of things we did not expect (e.g., IEDs). Remember the Rummy comment about fighting with the army you have. We invented and fielded mine resistant vehicles and Strykers.
If it’s the totals of the top line appropriations, it’s way too high. As I recall, about 35% of those costs were plus ups, earmarks, not requested by the military.
On thing that surprised me about the stimulus was to total lack of military content. The government has a long list of military hardware they intend to buy. Increasing quantities per year would have actually saved the government money and put people to work.
kato commented:
Sen. Bull:
As long as there is a big group of people who pay no taxes but vote to raise everyone else’s, this nightmare will continue.
In case folks haven’t figured it out yet, a big chunk of Obama voters are not going to be paying for their mandatory health insurance premiums. Other Americans, who are already paying their rent, their utilities, their food stamps and a laundry list of other freebies, will be paying it for them.
DrEvil commented:
Basically, everything the Democrats said about the economy under President Bush: worse economy ever, President out of touch, government makings things worse, Congress doing nothing but making the economy worse have actually come true. Now, that it is the Democrats who are responsible every thing is on the mend, anything that is negative is ignore, anything positive is exaggerated, but of course it is still Bush and the Republicans’ fault.
I guess the Democrats think that all Americans are as ignorant and misinformed as partisan Deocratic voters.
Have an Evil day
PatriotGames commented:
Republicans and Democrats alike have been taking this country to the same place in different ways and rates of speed… bankruptcy. It’s time to embrace the horror and take back our country… REBOOT CONGRESS. With a few notable exceptions, it is time to throw out every incumbent career politician and vote in new blood who intend to restore the Constitution!
Ann commented:
Democrats have a record of improving the economy. Look that the statistics from Washington Street Journal.
Republican George W. Bush “created” 3.0 million jobs. (132.5 million to 135.5 million jobs) Payroll increased 2.3%.
Democrat Bill Clinton “created” 23.1 million. (109.4 million to 132.5 million jobs) Payroll increased 21.1%.
Republican George H.W. Bush “created” 2.5 million (106.9 million to 109.4 million jobs) Payroll increases 2.3%.
Republican Ronald Reagan “created” 16.0 million jobs. (90.9 million to 106.9 million jobs) Payroll increased 17.6%.
Democrat Jimmy Carter “created” 10.5 million jobs. (80.4 million to 90.9 million jobs) Payroll increased 13.1%.
Republican Gerald Ford “created” 1.8 million jobs. (78.6 million to 80.4 million jobs) Payroll increased 2.3%.
Republican Richard Nixon “created” 9.4 million jobs. (69.2 million to 78.6 million jobs) Payroll increased 13.6%.
Democrat Lyndon Johnson “created” 11.9 million jobs. (57.3 million to 69.2 million jobs) Payroll increased 20.8%.
Democrats John F. Kennedy “created”3.6 million jobs. (53.7 million to 57.3 million jobs) Payroll increased 6.7%.
Republican Dwight Eisenhower “created” 3.5 million jobs. (50.2 million to 53.7 million jobs) Payroll increased 7%.
Democrat Harry Truman “created” 8.4 million jobs. (41.8 million to 50.2 million) Payroll increased 20.1%.