'Even before the 2010 midterm elections, with Democrats
controlling massive supermajorities in both the House and Senate, President
Obama had passed five stimulus and jobs bills. If you add up the promises, he
boldly promised well over 5.5 million jobs “created or saved.” But reality
turned out very differently: There were 2 million fewer people working in
September 2011 than when Obama took office. On top of that, population growth
by itself should have generated more than 3 million new jobs.'
'By the end of the summer, in August 2011, the unemployment
rate was still at 9.1 percent. It was no longer possible to claim the Stimulus
had worked well. Obama claimed that the sluggish economic growth wasn’t the
fault of his own economic policies; it was the fault of other circumstances
that he had no control over. It was either events outside the United States or
the irresponsible political behavior of others in Washington. Obama claimed:
"In the last few months, the economy has already had to
absorb an earthquake in Japan, the economic headwinds coming from Europe, the
Arab Spring and the [rise] in oil prices—all of which have been very
challenging for the recovery. But these are things we couldn’t control. Our
economy didn’t need Washington to come along with a manufactured crisis to make
things worse. That was in our hands. It’s pretty likely that the uncertainty
surrounding the raising of the debt ceiling—for both businesses and
consumers—has been unsettling, and just one more impediment to the full
recovery that we need."
There are a couple of problems with his argument. Economic
growth had already ground to a halt during the first three months of 2011—with
GDP growing by just 0.1 percent. This was well before the Arab Spring, the
renewed debt crisis in Greece and other countries, and the July and August 2011
debate over the debt ceiling. And whatever the impact of the March 2011
earthquake, its initial impact during the first quarter in the United States
would have been very limited. The president also blamed Republicans for not
passing his new legislation when they took over the House of Representatives in
January 2011. But with Democratic supermajorities in both the House and Senate
for the two previous years, it is pretty hard to blame for the slow growth in
the first half of 2011.
In addition, it seems a little hard to blame the Japanese
earthquake for our poor unemployment rate when the Japanese unemployment rate
fell and ours rose in the five months following the earthquake. Nor is it clear
how we can blame “economic headwinds” from Europe when our unemployment rate
from January to August 2011 rose while it fell for European countries such as
Germany, Italy, and Sweden and stayed the same in France.'
'No matter how you cut it, 3 million jobs have not been
added since the recession ended. The recession officially ended in June 2009,
and at that time 130.49 million people held jobs according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics’ Establishment Survey. The numbers for September 2011 show
131.33 million, an addition of just 840,000 jobs. But with the working-age
population having grown by 4.6 million people in the same period, this should
be viewed as a miserable failure. Furthermore, out of the 840,000 additional
jobs, the vast majority—540,000—were merely “temporary help” service jobs.' - Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and
What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, Grover G. Norquist and John R.
Lott, Jr.
The entire excerpt from the book Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to
Regain Our Future can be read at the following link:
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