OBAMA: JUST OK
Ecomonic legacy behind the 8 ball
Dear John: I saw an article on Yahoo about how the economy during the Obama years wasn’t as bad as some people are making it out to be. I wanted to know what you thought.
I know you care about the truth irrespective of politics and would provide the facts and just the facts, as the author of the Yahoo article purports to do
Keep doing what you’re doing. I know there are lots of folks who appreciate what you do and your commitment to the truth. M.C.
Dear M.C.: Thanks for the nice words.
Even though I’m ethically allowed to share my opinion in this column, I never take a point of view without having facts to back it up. There are plenty of people who’ll give you opinion based on nothing but thin air. Some even on hot air. Not here. So this is what I think of Obama’s economic legacy.
The rebound from the Great Recession has been the slowest on record. That’s a fact.
But President Obama did inherit a mess when he came into office. That mess included not only collapsing financial markets — which were largely the result of the panic caused by politicians of both parties — but also the enormous amount of national debt that exploded since the late 1990s.
Obama was behind the eight ball from the start. That’s his ex- cuse, and it is a good one.
Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy was neutralized because interest rates were already near zero. And government spending — the other way to stimulate the economy — wasn’t generally available because of the enormous level of debt that now approaches.
So the Fed was handcuffed. Congressional spenders were handcuffed. And the Obama White House didn’t seem to have any other ideas for getting the economy moving.
Millions of jobs were created during the Obama term. But they were about 30 percent fewer than would have been created in a truly healthy economy. And the ones that were created were typically lower-paying service jobs and part-time work. And many full-time jobs were turned into part-time because employers were looking for ways to deny people benefits.
ObamaCare, the president’s signature legislation, did create a lot of health-care jobs. And I don’t think anyone can argue that people need to be able to go to doctors. But forcing health care on a nation whose economy wasn’t firing on all cylinders just made employers cut back more.
So how did Obama do? He did OK. But it was clear from the recent presidential election that people wanted more than just OK.
The thing that bothers me most, however, is that the federal debt rose by about $600 billion in the past year. It’s bothersome that so much was spent in an election year. What bothered me more was that the economy still didn’t hum.
Now President-elect Donald Trump will be able to say that he, too, inherited a mess. And he’s probably already coming up with excuses for when people are disappointed with his performance four years from now.