Unless there were a couple of US presidents serving before Eve offered the forbidden fruit to Adam in the Garden of Eden, President Obama is now THE BEST economic president of ALL TIME. Move over, FDR, you’ve been dethroned. JOBS CREATION For the year 2014 – you know...the full year which started and ended BEFORE the new Republican majority even saw the inside of the Senate chamber three days ago – more PRIVATE SECTOR jobs were created than during any other year in US history. That’s right, President Obama has outperformed Clinton and Reagan and even FDR in creating PRIVATE SECTOR jobs in any single year. And even when you add in all the PUBLIC sector (GOVERNMENT!) jobs which Reagan and Clinton and Bush created as each of them EXPANDED THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT thereby pumping-up their overall TOTAL numbers, President Obama’s year of 2014 is still the best year for TOTAL jobs creation that we have seen in 14 years, since Clinton’s year of 1999. President Obama’s jobs numbers are unparalleled in not being padded with massive government hiring. Other than President Obama, the only president in modern times who has actually CUT government jobs was Reagan, when he cut 24,000 government jobs during his first term. BUT...Reagan ADDED back ALL of those government jobs PLUS another 1.4 MILLION government jobs, during his second term. President Obama cut 713,000 government jobs during his first term. And he has only added back less than 50,000 of those government jobs during the first two years of his second term. Bush had a NET LOSS of 462,000 PRIVATE sector jobs during the eight years immediately preceding President Obama taking office. President Obama has had a NET GAIN of more than 6.5 million PRIVATE sector jobs in his first six years in office. Taking ALL jobs created during Bush’s eight years in office (all private jobs plus the 1.7 million government jobs created by Bush) and subtracting all the jobs LOST during Bush’s eight years (including 4.4 million lost in his final year), leaves Bush with a net gain of 1.2 million total jobs in eight years. Another 4.3 million jobs were lost during President Obama’s first year. But then his stimulus program and auto-maker bailout and other measures – all of which were passed by the Democratic majority and opposed strenuously by the Republicans – began taking effect. Taking all the jobs created during President Obama’s first six years in office and subtracting all the jobs lost during that same period, leaves President Obama with a NET gain of over 6.8 MILLION total jobs created in only six years – five times as many net jobs as Bush created and accomplished two years sooner. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE Mitt Romney said in 2012 that if we elected him, he would have the unemployment rate down to 6% by the end of his first term, which would have been January 2017. It’s just now January 2015. And today’s jobs report of the US economy adding 241,000 private sector jobs for the month of December 2014, also brought news of a new unemployment rate: 5.6% – a lower rate than promised by Romney, achieved two years sooner. Thank you, President Obama. President Obama has also outperformed Reagan on this metric – at Reagan’s six-year point, unemployment was still 7.1%; it took him another year to even get down to the low 6% range. DEFICIT Not only did both Reagan and W. Bush pad their jobs numbers by engaging in massive government hiring, the deficit suffered as a result: Reagan tripled it; Bush doubled it. But President Obama has turned in his stellar numbers while simultaneously CUTTING the deficit. Google it, because you won’t believe it, but the deficit was the smallest in 2014 than it has been since 2008, the year BEFORE President Obama took office. STOCK MARKET The DOW average was at 10,650 when Bush took office in January 2001. In September 2008, the DOW closed at 10,700, almost completely erasing a full eight years of growth. Four months later, it had plummeted even further under Bush’s watch, sliding all the way down to 7,950 by January 20, 2009, the day President Obama was inaugurated. On December 23, 2014, the DOW closed at an ALL-TIME high, slightly above 18,000, well before Republicans were sworn in as the majority in the US Senate. ECONOMIC GROWTH Overall economic growth of the economy is measured by the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. In 2012 when the GDP was at 2%, Republican candidates said they could get the GDP all the way up to a number which seemed inconceivable at the time: 5%. But by the end of 2014, President Obama, working virtually alone, had the GDP up to 5% even with unprecedented attempts by conservatives to sabotage the economy. Importantly, when President Obama took office, manufacturing was in a several-year decline due to off-shoring of jobs to China. But much of the current growth is due to a renewed expansion of manufacturing under President Obama. Manufacturing has GROWN in American for the past 24 months straight – all before Republicans gained a majority in the Senate three days ago. GAS PRICES When Bush took office in January 2001, gas was $1.47 a gallon. Soon thereafter it began a precipitous rise, steadily increasing until it was $4.55 a gallon by the Summer of 2008. Then the economy collapsed. Housing prices tanked, the stock market bottomed-out, and commodities – including crude oil – crashed. So, yes, gas was $1.84 on the day President Obama took office in January 2009 but, that was the CRASHED price. As the economy recovered, the price of crude recovered and gas prices eventually returned near the range where they had been for most of Bush’s tenure; although, the peak under President Obama never reached the $4.00 mark – the highest it ever got under President Obama was $3.95 a gallon in May of 2011. In 2012, Newt said that if we re-elected President Obama, gas would go to $10 a gallon; but, if we would put Newt in office, he would bring gas down to $2.50 a gallon. Today it’s barely over $2.00 a gallon in many places. And that is without any help whatsoever from Republicans and it happened long before Republicans were sworn-in as the new senate majority three days ago. Gas prices have fallen for 120 straight days. AAA estimates that the lower prices saved middle-income Americans $14 billion dollars during the year 2014. Too, the temporary-crashed-price of $1.84 under Bush came at the expense of a total economic melt-down. The low prices under President Obama are coming at a time of unprecedented (considering the starting point) economic growth. TAXES The Bush tax rates were set to expire automatically at the end of 2010. President Obama agreed with Republicans to extend the Bush cuts for two more years if congress would agree to extend unemployment and provide an ADDITIONAL tax cut, to the middle class, by changing the Social Security and Medicare payroll tax from 6.4% of the total gross income to 4.4%. At the end of 2012, the Bush tax cuts expired and three days into 2013, the Obama Tax Cuts were signed into law, permanently establishing all tax brackets at the Bush-tax-cut level, with the exception of a 4.4% increase on income above $450,000. 2009 Taxes were exactly the same as they were under Bush 2010 Taxes were exactly the same as they were under Bush 2011 Taxes were two percentage points LESS than under Bush – lowest in modern history 2012 Taxes were two percentage points LESS than under Bush – lowest in modern history 2013 Taxes were exactly the same as under Bush except for modest increase for income above $450,000 2014 Taxes are exactly the same as under Bush except for modest increase for income above $450,000 So if you claimed that President Obama raised your taxes by even one penny during his first two years in office, you were not telling the truth. And if you did not give him credit for giving you the lowest tax rates of your life in his third and fourth years in office and you did give Bush credit for Bush’s tax cuts, you were being hypocritical. And if you claim that President Obama has raised your taxes in his fifth and sixth years in office and you do not earn above $457,600 as a couple (or $406,750 as a single person), by now you are just plain-out willfully lying. ADVERSITY The greatness of a great president shines the brightest during the most adverse conditions. George Washington had a country to build. Lincoln had a country to hold together. FDR had a country to rebuild. No president since these three has had to suffer the adversity which President Obama has endured. The same type of people who hated Lincoln so virulently, hate President Obama. And they hate him for the same reasons they hated Lincoln. They got together on the night of President Obama’s first inauguration and devised a plan to oppose him on absolutely everything – even things THEY previously proposed and supported. And only FDR was handed a worse economy by his predecessor than the broken and collapsed economy which Bush handed to President Obama. It’s when you consider the adverse conditions, that President Obama’s greatness becomes so obviously evident. More total jobs were created under Reagan and Clinton than under President Obama thus far. But Reagan and Clinton didn’t start out with a crashed stock market, collapsed housing market, dried-up credit market, and historic loss of jobs with dire projections that unemployment would soon hit 25%. And during the eight years which both Clinton and Bush served, each had a Republican-controlled congress for six of those years which worked WITH them on the economy and should thus be given partial credit for any successes. Much of the current economic success is due to the things which President Obama was able to get through congress during his first two years with the help of Democrats. The rest of it has been accomplished largely by him – alone. Clinton’s economy also benefited immensely from the cell phone and the personal computer coming of age; Bushs economy similarly benefited from the smart phone – things not attributable to any government official (other than Al Gore). And both Clinton’s economy and Bush’s economy were built largely on the careless unbridled irresponsible free-flow of credit, for which we all began to pay dearly during Bush’s last year in office. I’ve often said that President Obama is the best president we have seen since FDR. But it took FDR 12 years to fix the mess that the previous Republican administration handed to him; President Obama has done it in six. MOVING FORWARD Get ready for it. We’re “about to enter” a two-year period of unprecedented economic growth; unparalleled job creation; unheard-of stock-market peaks; gas prices at two dollars a gallon, massive middle-class tax cuts back to Bush rates – a total economic recovery of biblical proportions – all due to the mere swearing-in of a Republican majority in the Senate three days ago. Hallelujah. It’s morning in America again. The truth is, it has been “morning in America” since 7:00 a.m. and it’s now 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon and conservatives are just now rolling out of bed thinking the sun only rose when they finally woke up from their self-induced truth-impermeable coma of willful ignorance of reality. If you are a conservative, please bookmark this post...you are going to need to refer back to it numerous times in the coming weeks when Fox “News” finally starts telling you the truth about the good economic indicators, so they can (misleadingly) give credit to the new Republican majority in the senate, just in time for the 2016 elections. This post will keep you grounded in the fact that the best economic recovery in history happened right in front of your willfully-blinded eyes, long before Republicans gained control of both chambers of congress a mere three days ago.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 21:00:28 +0000
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