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Obama: I should have said that the recovery would take a really long time in 2008
Hotair ^ | 04/11/2015 | NOAH ROTHMAN

Posted on 04/11/2015 5:22:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Regrets, he’s had a few. But most of them have had to do with the rosy picture he painted of what the economy would look like following a swift infusion of “Obamanomics.”

The president spent much of his time on the post-campaign campaign trail in 2009 promising that the unprecedented sum of money passed by Congress as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) would have a speedy and positive effect on the economy. Roads, bridges, and “shovel-ready” jobs would quickly put Americans back to work. When that massive sum of borrowed money failed to have its intended effect on the unemployment rate, Obama realized and confessed too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”

Oops.

The president’s latest lament is also about how he approached the economic recovery when first taking office. While Obama did not express any regret over his administration’s impulse to pass the failed stimulus and forge doggedly ahead with health care reform, he did confess that he regretted not preparing the American people for hard years that lay before them. In a town hall appearance in Jamaica on Wednesday, Obama admitted that he was too sanguine about the state of the economy and had misled the public about the effectiveness of his economic policy preferences.

“I would have probably advised was that I might have needed to warn the American people and paint a picture for them that was more accurate about the fact that it would take some time to dig ourselves out of a very big hole,” Obama said after he was asked what advice he would give to his younger self in 2008. “With us, we came in just as people were really starting to feel the impacts. And trying to paint a picture that we’ll make it but it’s going to take some time, and here are the steps that we need to take — I think I would have advised myself to do a better job spending more time not just getting the policy right, but also describing it in ways that people understood, that gave them confidence in their own future.”

Democratic partisans can rest assured that Obama still thinks his administration took the right policy approach to the addressing the financial crisis. That’s going to be cold comfort for the millions of Americans who count themselves out of work or underemployed. Despite the fact that America’s unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since the collapse of the housing market, that number does not reflect the reduced labor force participation rate which remains at its lowest point since the late 1970s.

With hiring the weakest that it has been in 15 months according to the March employment report and no arctic blast to blame for that reduced hiring, economists are beginning to wonder if there even is much of a recovery. “If the workforce participation rate today were as high as it was on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate in this country would be 9.7 percent, we wouldn’t be complaining about the bad recovery because we wouldn’t call it a recovery,” the columnist George Will said on Sunday.

Well, at least Obama thinks he got the policy right. He concedes, however, that he should have warned you before he was reelected to a second term in the White House just how dire the economic situation was. Better late than never?


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: obama; recession; recovery
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1 posted on 04/11/2015 5:22:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Yes the recovery would take a really long time until all of you have forgotten what a good economy looks like.


2 posted on 04/11/2015 5:28:16 AM PDT by Moorings
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To: SeekAndFind

One does not dig one’s way out of a hole into which one has fallen after extensive digging. Digging only makes the hole deeper. The hole is now 100 times deeper than when we began this marriage bonding stupidity and contempt for all that made us great.
We are suffering the consequences of false illusion and mean spirit. O ought to admit there is no HOPE only disastrous CHANGE for worse and worse.
VP Dick Cheney paints too rosey a picture by describing Obama as the worse president in our nation’s history. He is no president at all, but is a demon dragged from the pit of hell to torment us.


3 posted on 04/11/2015 5:31:53 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: Moorings
RE: "Yes the recovery would take a really long time until all of you have forgotten what a good economy looks like."

I combined several federal government agencies' tables into one table to try to show the failure of Democrat Obama administration compared to prior administrations.

I hope to keep it updated quarterly through election 2016.

4 posted on 04/11/2015 5:39:30 AM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yeah, it’s hard for America to recover when you’re dropping one anvil after another on top of any American who dares to try to get his head above water.


5 posted on 04/11/2015 5:41:17 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (All that is required for evil to advance is for government to do "something")
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To: Moorings

you said what you thought and thats the problem.


6 posted on 04/11/2015 5:44:06 AM PDT by GotMojo
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To: SeekAndFind

“I would have probably advised was that I might have needed to warn the American people and paint a picture for them that was more accurate about the fact that it would take some time to dig ourselves out of a very big hole,” Obama said after he was asked what advice he would give to his younger self in 2008.”

I have examined that sentence with all its flaws and asked myself what my fifth grade English teacher would have said about it and when I reflect that it is a quote from the “leader of the free world” it becomes truly frightening. On top of the pathetic wording is the fact that he suggests we dig ourselves out of a hole, it is a cliche that you CANNOT dig yourself out of a hole, you can only dig a bigger hole.


7 posted on 04/11/2015 5:45:11 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Racism is racism, regardless of the race of the racist.)
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To: Sirius Lee

You would think so but according to the FReepers who claim to have become fabulously wealthy under Obama, only the stupid and lazy are struggling.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3277971/posts


8 posted on 04/11/2015 5:45:32 AM PDT by cripplecreek ("For by wise guidance you can wage your war")
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To: SeekAndFind

He should have warned that recovery would take at least 4 years, and 8 if he was reelected. He could warn us now that recovery will take yet another 4 years if another Democrat is elected. Why, with continually electing Democrats, that recovery can be put off indefinitely.

Of course, he’ll never say that.


9 posted on 04/11/2015 5:46:10 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: SeekAndFind

“Oops! I broke it. Oh well. Can I get me someone hee-uh to clean this up? Gotta go. Off to another round of golf to cheer myself up. That or another vacation. I deserve it.” -Zero


10 posted on 04/11/2015 5:48:50 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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To: SeekAndFind

What he really means is:

I am going to keep kicking you now that your down and wounded to make sure you never get up.


11 posted on 04/11/2015 5:48:52 AM PDT by eyeamok
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To: SeekAndFind

Well, by installing the largest tax increase in history (Obamacare) right after the worst recession in 50 years, he certainly did all he could do to make the recovery take a really long time.


12 posted on 04/11/2015 5:50:28 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (The media must be defeated any way it can be done.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yes, shovel ready jobs are actually a fantasy, but look! Over there! GREEN SHOOTS


13 posted on 04/11/2015 5:53:01 AM PDT by Steven Tyler
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To: The_Media_never_lie
Well, by installing the largest tax increase in history (Obamacare) right after the worst recession in 50 years, he certainly did all he could do to make the recovery take a really long time.

Not yet he hasn't. He can still do some more damage by bringing in millions of illiterate, innumerate, un-employable welfare cases to add to the ones we're already producing to drag us down some more. But he's working on that.

14 posted on 04/11/2015 5:55:16 AM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: tacticalogic

Yes, he is going to “help” us some more.


15 posted on 04/11/2015 5:56:42 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (The media must be defeated any way it can be done.)
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To: SeekAndFind

President Jug Ears has been back - tracking, clarifying and outright lying since day one!


16 posted on 04/11/2015 6:07:12 AM PDT by subterfuge (Minneseeota: the laughingstock of the nation - for lots of reasons!)
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To: SeekAndFind

The winding tentacles of Obamacare is to blame for high unemployed, underemployed and folks who have quit looking. Simple!


17 posted on 04/11/2015 6:15:17 AM PDT by broken_arrow1 (I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - Nathan Hale "Patriot")
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To: SeekAndFind
I'm now living in the Free Republic of Texas (by D***!), but visit my home State of Mississippi from time to time. I'm astounded at how depressed everybody is here. I'm convinced that the Culture of Failure that Barack Hussein Obama (mmm mmm mmm) has foisted upon this country has hit Mississippi HARD.

Mississippi has the largest percentage black population in the country. All of them are as upset at the lack of hope and opportunity as everybody else. However, almost all of them just love and worship Obama, and consider any criticism of him to be racism.....which is EXACTLY why Democrats groomed and trained him to be President.

For 2016, the Dems are going to try to shift gears and drag Hillary across the line by screaming "WAR ON WOMEN!" I don't think it'll work- everyone knows by now that Hillary is a old drunken Marxist Alinskyite Shrew who hasn't done anything competent in her life. I could picture her wearing a Mao suit, spouting Marxist economic theory before an audience forced to keep their eyes open. I'd love to see Ted Cruz get nominated just to eviscerate Monica Lewinsky's ex-boyfriend's wife in three debates.

Thank you for tolerating my Saturday morning stream of thought.

18 posted on 04/11/2015 6:21:39 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (Ob)
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To: MuttTheHoople

“.........the recovery would take a really long time.......”

Well, he got that right, it is going to take years to recover from the damage that bastard and his ilk have done to this country, its allies, race relations, foreign policy and anything else you care to add to the list. He fundamentally changed this country alright but NOT for the better.


19 posted on 04/11/2015 6:25:12 AM PDT by DaveA37
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To: DaveA37
It won't take THAT long. All America needs is a President who knows well enough to let the Free Market take over business, drill for oil and dig for coal on any land where it might be under, cut some regulations, stand by our allies and up to our enemies abroad, and we'll have the country back in order.

The black "leadership" will whine like a bunch of little bitches, and their "flock" will still follow them, but they'll do it with better jobs, driving nicer cars, and living in better homes.

20 posted on 04/11/2015 6:37:29 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (Ob)
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