One of Romney's Lies (and there are so many) Dispelled

[vel]

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Did Obama make the economy worse? Not according to most statistics

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/03/10312358-did-obama-make-the-economy-worse-not-according-to-most-statistics

 

Over the past two days, Mitt Romney has resurrected this claim hitting President Obama: He has made the economy worse.

Yesterday, when receiving Donald Trump's endorsement, Romney said:

    “He’s frequently telling us that he did not cause the recession, and that’s true. But he made it worse.”

And today, according to NBC's Garrett Haake, he said something similar:

    "This has been a tough time. And I know the president didn't cause this downturn -- this recession. But he didn't make it better, either. He made it worse. He made it worse because instead of focusing his energy on the economy and getting people back to work, he used his mandate being elected-- he used that to put through a series of programs that he and his base and his friends thought were important but frankly made it harder for our economy to recover. And so we've suffered."

However, most of the economic numbers don't support Romney's claim.

For example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that the economic stimulus Obama signed into law added -- in the 4th quarter of 2009 -- between 1 million and 2 million employed workers and boosted the GDP between 1.5% to 3.5% higher than it would have been without the stimulus.

In addition, a more recent CBO study -- for the second quarter of 2011 -- found that the stimulus raised real GDP between 0.8% and 2.5% and lowered the unemployment rate between 0.5 and 1.6 percentage points, compared with what would have occurred without it.

And another analysis, by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, estimated that the stimulus raised 2010 real GDP by 3.4%, held the unemployment rate about 1.5 percentage points lower, and added nearly 2.7 jobs to U.S. payrolls.

Looking solely at quarterly Gross Domestic Product, it's gone from -6.7% in the first quarter of 2009 and -0.7% in the second quarter of '09, to positive territory ever since -- including 2.8% the past quarter.

And looking at monthly payroll statistics, the numbers have gone from a loss of 818,000 jobs in Jan. 2009 -- when Obama took office -- to 16-straight months of positive job growth, including a preliminary gain of 243,000 jobs in Jan. 2012.

The one metric that might support Romney's claim that Obama made the economy worse is the unemployment rate. When Obama took office, the unemployment rate stood at 7.8%, and it was 8.3% in his first full month as president.

The unemployment rate later rose to a high of 10.0% in Oct. 2009, and it remained at or above 9.0% for all of 2010 and most of 2011. But beginning in the fall of 2011, it began to decline, and it now sits at 8.3% -- the same percentage as it was in his first full month as president, before his policies went into effect.

When First Read reached out to the Romney campaign to provide additional data to support the claim that Obama has made the economy worse, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul responded: "The economy grew only 1.7% in [all of] 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II. This is worse than growth in 2010 and is worse performance over time."

Also: "In Oct. 2009, 58.51% of the American population had a job. Today, 58.46% of the American population has a job. All that has changed is that fewer Americans are even trying to find a job –- the percentage of Americans in the labor force has declined from 65.0% to 63.7%."

And Saul adds that Obama's economic advisers -- before he took office -- said the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8.0%. And, of course, it still remains above that level.

Interestingly, back in June 2011, Romney used this same Obama-made-the-recession-worse rhetoric. But when NBC asked Romney why he made that claim -- when the data didn't support it -- he replied: "I didn't say that things are worse."

He went on to say:

    What I said was that economy hasn't turned around, that you've got 20 million Americans out of work, or seriously unemployed; housing values still going down. You have a crisis of foreclosures in this country. The economy, by the way, if you think the economy is great and going well, be my guest. But the president of the United States, when he put in place his stimulus plan and borrowed $787 billion, said he would hold unemployment below 8% -- and 8% seemed like an awfully high number. It hasn't been below 8% since.  That's failure. We're over 9% unemployment. That's failure. He set the bogie himself at 8% ,which strikes me as a very high number and we're still above that three years later.

[Undecided]

The Dow was somewhere around 7400 when Obama took office.  Now it is almost 13,000.  The Nasdaq has almost doubled.  Unemployment is  finally beginning to come down, but it likely won't be a linear decrease.  We have been in a very deep hole.  We have also become more and more a global economic society, and so things may never return to the way they were in the 80s and 90s.  There were trouble signs due to this before the crash, and because of this new reality it is unknown to what level we will recover.

[vel]

Undecided, I have a bachelors in economics and through my entire course of studies there was one, and only one rule that was considered immutable: everything changes.

It will never be like the 80s or 90s and in the 80s or 90s you could say it will never be like the 60s or 70s. But so what?

We will be able to have a healthy, vibrant economy again. We will have full employment. The fact of the matter is that the path that "conservatives" led us down from Reagan to George W. Bush created unprecedented concentration of wealth. "Conservatives" aren't really conservative, because if they were they would recognize this concentration of wealth as being the decidedly unconservative excess and gluttony that it really is. "Conservatives" aren't conservative at all. "Conservatives" are a toxic brew of severe religionists, war profiteers, racists, and neocons with a particularly unreflective instrumentalist overlay of Ayn Rand.

The fact of the matter is that President Obama saved us from the Great Republican Depression II, and now what do Republicans want to do? They want to resume the very same Ayn Rand type policies that brought us to the brink in the first place.

Tell me where there ideology has ever succeeded. Chile? Greece? Iraq? Here?

[Case_Closed]

Unemployment is  finally beginning to come down They have finally stopped counting those who are no longer looking for work or who have exhausted their 99 JC3 Weeks.  They are now counting family members who make a run to the bank with a Welfare Check or drop off the kids to soccer practice as "employed."

Fixed it for you.

[vel]

Fixed it for you.

There has been no change in the methodology since Clinton changed it.

You're full of shit. What else is new?

[Case_Closed]

There has been no change in the methodology since Clinton changed it.

You're full of shit. What else is new?

Are you saying resource-sucking scum like 99-Weeker JC3 have been allowed to purloin the national Treasury with their unwillingness to get a job since Clinton?

[JC3.0]

Are you saying resource-sucking scum like 99-Weeker JC3 have been allowed to purloin the national Treasury with their unwillingness to get a job since Clinton?

Fuck you in spades you loser. I have a job with a fortune 500 company who hired me after drug testing and criminal and credit background check including fingerprints-which,unlike yours, are not cheeto/masturbate-stained. Stop w/ the 99 weeks thing. We were in one of the worst periods of unemployment at that time. Since then I have been able to do some wonderful things while taking care of my family. What do you do besides troll newsrake hourly,prick?