Posted on 11/04/2014 8:19:55 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
People have many perceptions of how the US economy or the country as a whole is doing in recent years. Depending on your political views, you may think the country is doing exceptionally well or on the verge of collapse.
Listed below are 14 objective facts, without interjecting any opinion, about the state of America under the leadership of President Obama. Every statement is followed up with a link to a source where you can verify these facts for yourself.
That’s right, for 63 consecutive months the US economy has gotten progressively better. That includes 54 consecutive months of private sector job growth. Forbes magazine, no fan of President Obama, crunched the numbers and demonstrated how the economic recovery under President Obama has been better in just about every measurable way than the recovery under President Reagan.
Again, this statistic comes from the Forbes Magazine article listed above. In fact, we have now had 54 straight months of private sector job creation. That is the longest period of job creation since the Department of Labor has been keeping statistics. See the link below.
Not only has the unemployment rate dropped significantly, but since the recession ended, our economy as added over ten million new jobs. You can refer to the Forbes article above or check this article on PoliticsUSA.
Since early 2009 there has been a steady trend in stock market growth. The Dow Jones Industrial averages reached an all-time high of 17,098 in August, 2014. Since most Americans have 401K retirement investments in the stock market, this stock market growth benefits millions of middle class Americans.
http://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years
The $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit that Obama inherited in 2009 was in a large part due to the high rate of unemployment. When millions of people were put out of work in 2008 and 2009, it resulted in far less income taxes and less economic activity to generate federal revenue. As ten million people have been put back to work, there have been billions more tax dollars generated. As a result, the deficit has been shrinking each year. The 2014 deficit is projected to be around $500 billion, the smallest deficit since 2007 and roughly 1/3 of what it was in 2009.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html
You may have heard critics say that President Obama is spending money wildly and running up our debt. According to this article from Forbes, Obama has increased spending by 1.4% annually, far less than President Reagan (8.7%) or George W. Bush (8.1%). In fact, Obama has increased spending less than any president since Eisenhower.
After President Obama took office, thousands of Tea Party members all over the country held rallies protesting Obama’s tax increases. At that time, President Obama had actually passed several tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Most of the Tea Partiers who were protesting had only seen their taxes decrease under Obama. Yet polls indicated that most Tea Party members wrongly believed their taxes had gone up.
In fact, the only people whose income taxes have gone up during Obama’s presidency are those making $400,000 per year or more. That's less than 2% of the population. Today, for the vast majority of people, tax rates are exactly where they were when Obama first took office or lower. The article below from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains this in greater detail.
While some people claim that oil production has declined under President Obama, the truth is just the opposite. Oil production has reached record highs. The United States now produces so much oil that we export more oil and gasoline than we import.
Depending on whose numbers you use, between 7 and 10 million Americans acquired health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. Now that those 7 to 10 million Americans have insurance, the rest of us are no longer on the hook to pay for their health care when they get sick. This saves the American people billions of dollars in the long run.
The Medicare trust fund had been on course to run out of money by the end of 2016. But due to cost savings from the Affordable Care Act and lower healthcare expenses, Medicare’s trust fund is now stable until the year 2030 without cutting benefits.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/medicare-social-security-headed-in-different-directions-1406564712
Contrary to the predictions from Republicans, health care costs have increased at a much slower pace since the passage of the ACA.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/healthcostreport_final_noembargo_v2.pdf
With the end of the Iraq war and the steady withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, we have fewer people in war zones now than any time since 2002.
Despite Dick Cheney’s claim that if voters elect a Democrat as president, we’ll be “hit again and hit hard” by al Qaeda, we have actually been far safer from terrorist attacks on US soil in recent years than we were under the previous president. There have been several unsuccessful attacks against the US under both presidents, but under Obama, al Qaeda has been largely unsuccessful in striking the US on our home soil.
Despite the publicity from busloads of children who illegally entered the country, the numbers prove that President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any other president.
All of the facts stated above can be confirmed through multiple sources, yet most Americans are not aware of all of this positive news. I invite you to do your own research and check these facts for yourself.
The truth is, most other presidents would envy President Obama’s record despite the fact that he inherited the worst economic crash since the Great Depression.
Here's a bonus. If you feel particularly ambitious, feel free to research these additional facts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/24/health-insurance-rebates_n_5614570.html
Despite the unprecedented obstructionism and record number of filibusters used by Republicans to kill even the most routine legislation, the fact remains, in almost every measurable way, the American people are profoundly better off today than they were before President Obama took office.
Best way to answer this might be that if all of that pablum were actually true on its own (without the need for distortion), then the Dems would be sweeping the night tonight.
#8 - Domestic oil production has indeed sky-rocketed, and that is a good thing. Did Obama’s policies have ANYTHING to do with the expansion? Not in the least —the technology of fracking was responsible, the effort of American petroleum engineers. Obama’s energy secretary is on record, looking forward to gasoline costing $10 per gallon, something highly unlikely if American energy production were now at levels prevailing six years ago. Oil production has expanded IN SPITE of Obama’s policies, not because of them.
Don’t have time for a complete rebuttal but #1 is based on surveys. They can be easily fudged by being a little selective in who you survey, or which answers you keep, which ones you discard for subjective reasons. Further, the index is calculated via various responses to the survey questions and unspecified weighting factors. No information on if these weights have been stable or altered along the way to manipulate the result.
Here are some answers:
1. Economic growth—by government spending and not considering price increases.
2. Private sector job growth— they’re mostly part time, reduced wages.
3. Unemployment—everybody’s now either part-time, or dropped out of the market, & they’re probably counting jobs taken by Hb-1 workers and illegals.
4. Stock market growth—there is no where else to invest money.
5.Federal budget deficit—new taxes for health care not yet paid for treatment. Also, remember they’re talking about the budget, not the actual trillions in federal dept. That’s bigger.
6. Spending has decreased thanks mostly to military cut-backs. A 1.4 increase in a shrinking economy isn’t much to boast about.
7. Lower income taxes reflect lower incomes. duh.
8. Foreign oil dependence—God this is getting hilarious.
9 Health insurance? Check the deductibles.
-— and so on.
#14 is based on including people turned back at the border as deportations.
No other administration has counted it that way.
Mention what unemployment was exactly six years into bushs term. I think we were right around 4.7 or so just before the pelosi takeover at this exact moment in 2006
#3 us based on counting people that left the labor force unwilling as. Or longer employed. The U-6 employment rate has dropped little, and the labor force participation rate is the lowest since the Carter administration.
Also compare the amenic 1-2% growth rates now to reagans recovery or even the 90s. We’re in a slow, incremental growth rate. Worst ever coming out of a massive downturn.
They substitute TIME for actual growth. Simple internet searches will give you a plethora of links to prove that the recovery is the weakest one out of a recession in history. GDP is about half of the average since 1960, and it took until this year for stocks to recover lost ground. Fracking has happened despite, not because of Obama. Take fracking out of the equation and our pitiful economic numbers are dismal.
Key word is ‘In just about every measurable way’, Under Reagan unemployment was higher longer, but it was because people were flooding into the work force. Everyone was getting a job. So yeah, the number was worse in this case, but it was because the economy was better. I remember those private sector job creation numbers even now. 400k plus per month, even hit some 680k. Those weren’t government jobs folks.
There are people sore justifiable with Reagan (at least in their mind) Reagan believed in the private economy and in some cases that meant further rusting out the rust belt and encouraging people to move out to establish themselves a career. Mostly effected were the young, like I was at the time. I was better for it.
I remember how the press were constantly doing stories on the left behind, those people locked into welfare that refused to move. Same people you now see living in the hood of Detroit are the children of these people you saw in the ads in the 80s.
1. We’ve now had 63 straight months of economic expansion.
That’s right, for 63 consecutive months the US economy has gotten progressively better. That includes 54 consecutive months of private sector job growth. Forbes magazine, no fan of President Obama, crunched the numbers and demonstrated how the economic recovery under President Obama has been better in just about every measurable way than the recovery under President Reagan.
Looks like they are all lies
#6 is based on the stimulus spending in Obama’s first year to Bush.
Technically, that spending was still in the last fiscal year started by Bush. But, it was initiated by Obama.
Using that inflated number as the baseline makes it look like subsequent years has a much slower rate of growth in spending.
For #1, Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. So, no, this is not Forbes opinion.
I remember that Reagan and Bush Sr were in office when fracking was first recognized as a possibility to tap shale. It took high oil prices and private industry to make it happen.
I remember reading about this in magazines, they said the technology was nearly production ready, all they needed was sustained oil prices above 40-50 dollars for it to be profitable.
Indeed president Bush added 1.4 trillion in debt his last year in office. Of course, remember that he had a hostile congress to contend with and was fighting a war too.
His first year in office, Obama racked up a 1.7 trillion dollar debt and has only been below 1 trillion dollars since.
The reason that the unemployment figures are so low, is that those numbers are based on people getting ng unemployment benefits. When those run out, unemployed people no longer are counted as unemployed. The actual unemployment rate, so I am told is actually hovering around 11% or so.
Yes, 7 to 10 million people have been added to insurance rolls. Of course that doesn’t take into account the 10 meters lion who have lost theirs.
The average household has an income which is $2,500 less than when Obama came into office.
All those jobs created sure look good on paper. Of course they don’t take into account the jobs which have been lost and tha fact that the net jobs has not kt up with population growth
#1 Private Sector Job Growth: all net job growth has gone to immigrants legal and illegal
http://cis.org/all-employment-growth-since-2000-went-to-immigrants
To support the claim of “record” deportations in 2012, the Obama administration and its supporters cite the 409,000 deportations attributed to ICE that year. This is the highest number of removals credited to ICE in a single year; however, the number is higher because it includes the largest number of Border Patrol cases that ever have been transferred to ICE for processing in a single year. It does not reflect an increase in enforcement activity. In past years, these cases would have been handled by the Border Patrol, and counted in total deportations, but not as removals. Removals are at best half the number of total deportations, and do not represent the entire scope of enforcement actions taken by DHS enforcement agencies.
The President himself confirmed this statistical manipulation in 2011, speaking at a roundtable for Hispanic reporters:
“The statistics are actually a little deceptive because what we’ve been doing is, with the stronger border enforcement, we’ve been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back. That is counted as a deportation, even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours, sent back — that’s counted as a deportation.” he said.
http://www.cis.org/ICE-Illegal-Immigrant-Deportations
#2 and #3:
all net job growth since 2000 has been jobs for immigrants, legal and illegal:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/07/Black-Teen-Unemployment-Jumps-to-38
unemployment of all teens put at 28.5% by Businessweek:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/07/Black-Teen-Unemployment-Jumps-to-38
unemployment of Black teens set at 38%, Breitbart:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/07/Black-Teen-Unemployment-Jumps-to-38
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