The Trumpbama economy

The pretty good news: Eleven months into the Trump administration, job creation is more or less continuing along the trend established in Barack Obama’s two-term presidency.

Friday, the Labor Department reported 228,000 new hires nationwide in November, as the unemployment rate held at a 17-year low.

Monthly job growth for 2017 now averages 174,000, which is about 13,000 fewer jobs per month than 2016’s average of 187,000, and well below the Obama economy’s 199,000-a-month post-recession average.

(Remember: Candidate Donald Trump, over and over again, called those Obama job numbers unacceptable, abysmal and other, more Trumpian insults with fewer syllables.)

The very bad news: President Trump and Republicans in Congress are set to scramble the economy and risk this steady if insufficient progress by forcing through a deficit-exploding tax cut that delivers the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of its benefits to the wealthiest Americans — while singling out economic engines like New York and California for unprecedented punishment.

Clip and save the November 2017 jobs numbers. Remember the solid state of the economy before Republicans got what they wanted, and what they wrongly insisted the nation needed.