Obama Has It Wrong (ECONOMY)

September 2, 2014

Obama Has It Wrong - American Workers Aren't Better Off Under His Policies

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY



Economy: Time was, they had fact-checkers at the White House. They must've had the weekend off when President Obama let go a whopper at a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee.

'By almost every measure," he boasted, "the American economy and American workers are better off than when I took office." This must explain why nearly half of American workers believe the U.S. is still in a recession.

Sure, the stock market's done well and employment has picked up, but the most important indicator of their financial situation is whether take-home pay keeps pace with inflation. And by this measure most households are falling behind.

Median household income, according to the Census Bureau, is down by more than $2,000 in real terms since Obama moved into the Oval Office in January 2009 and has dropped $1,600 since the recession officially ended five months later.

One big reason household incomes have stalled is that labor force participation has fallen by 3 percentage points, representing an added 7 million Americans not even seeking employment. When people don't work, their income falls effectively to zero.

This vaunted recovery is half the normal pace in terms of job creation and GDP growth, according to a report from the Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. JEC also reports this is the weakest rebound from a recession since the Great Depression.

We are 5 million jobs below where the president's economic team told us we would be when they sold on the snake oil of a $830 billion fiscal stimulus plan.

After 5-1/2 years in the White House, Obama has added almost $7 trillion in debt with little to show for it — unless you count 46 million Americans on food stamps as an accomplishment.

Obama claims he has a plan to put the economy back to work. "I'm not asking for the moon. I'm asking for policies that help folks get ahead. ... Republicans running Congress are opposed to them," Obama said Monday.

The last time we looked, Democrats and Harry Reid still ran the Senate, and that's been the graveyard of economic growth policies. Reid won't even allow votes on the Keystone pipeline, corporate tax reform, medical-device tax repeal, a repatriation holiday to bring $1 trillion to $2 trillion of capital locked overseas back to America or an end to the ObamaCare 30-hour-a-week rule for full-time employment, to name just a few.

The president is angry that House Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

But how is that going to help financially squeezed middle-class families? Only about 5% of workers earn the minimum. Most of the remaining 95% are running on a financial treadmill.

What Obama covets is that rubber stamp he had in the first two years of his presidency — a stamp that approved ObamaCare, the stimulus, tax increases on investment, Dodd-Frank, cash for clunkers, bail-outs and a grand expansion of the welfare state.

Actually, he is asking for the moon, and the quickest way to tank the economy again is for voters to give it to him.