Economic Recovery: Serious Voters Need to Be Aware of the Record and Motive

Posted by Tina

The most important questions voters have in the coming elections have to do with the economy and jobs. We need information so that we can support and vote for people that are most likely to get behind policies that will get our economy going and inspire good job creation in the private sector. Peter Ferara of Forbes asks one of the key questions and supplies needed information. He asks, “How Does President Obama’s Economic Recovery Compare to Those of Other Presidents.”

President Obama’s jobs record compared to others:

Since the Great Depression, there have been 11 other recessions in America before this last one. In all those recessions, the economy recovered all jobs lost during the recession an average of 25 months after the recession began. So the job effects of prior post Depression recessions lasted an average of about 2 years. But here we are today, 5½ years, or 67 months, after the recession started, and we still have not recovered all of the jobs lost during the recession.

Reagan’s record on jobs:

President Reagan…recovered all of the jobs lost during that recession within 36 months. At this point in the Reagan recovery, jobs had grown nearly 10% higher than when the recession started, representing an increase of more than 10 million more jobs.

In terms of Gross Domestic Product and growth:

…in the 11 post depression recessions before President Obama, the economy recovered the lost GDP during the recession within an average of 4.5 quarters after the recession started. But it took Obama’s recovery 16 quarters, or 4 years, to reach that point. Today, 5½ years, or 22 quarters, after the recession started, the economy (real GDP) has grown only about 3% above where it was when the recession started. By sharp contrast, at this point in the Reagan recovery, the economy had boomed by about 20%, or one fifth.

The President has been making speeches proposing a “grand bargain” which represents more of the same policies that have created a disaster…it represents no bargain at all. It is instead simply more political posturing for the coming election.

As Peter Ferara points out:

…the lesson of the whole 20th century is that decentralized free markets with productive incentives and real competition is what creates robust economic growth and prosperity.

He suggests that Obama has failed to learn this lesson which worked and worked exceedingly well under Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton and Bush. I don’t think it’s a failure to learn from the past. In my opinion, Obama knows exactly what to do to make the economy robust. He decided, in my opinion, that sacrificing the livelihoods, causing suffering and hurt in middle class America, was worth it if he could move the country toward single payer healthcare and fundamentally change how America works. His support of amnesty, college loans, and union creation is part of that same motivation.

Americans have suffered because the elite radical progressives in the Democrat Party leadership had a specific agenda and that is all that mattered to them.