27 Jul 2012 Obama More Concerned with Growing Government Than Growing the Economy
Despite continued dismal economic news, such as today’s report from the Commerce Department that America’s GDP only grew by 1.5 percent between April and June, President Obama seems to remain upbeat. He appears to think his economic plan, to take a quote from Charlie Sheen, is “winning.”
Project 21 member Derryck Green begs to differ. Derryck suggests it’s all a sales pitch — that Obama is too involved in ramming through his political agenda to truly care about fixing the economy:
The President’s economic message is becoming more and more disconnected from reality.
While in Virginia in mid-July, he infamously said the successes of American business owners wasn’t necessarily due to their own sacrifice, hard work and dedication but ostensibly to those who “invested roads and bridges.” In other words, the success was due to the government.
Earlier this week in California, he told a crowd that the approach to solving the nation’s economic problems by simply cutting taxes should be disregarded because, “We tried that and it didn’t work.” Obama further belittled this approach by claiming it resembled former President Bush’s “top down” economic policy.
Obama wasn’t done. After disparaging this alternative economic plan, he said, “Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and [our plan] worked.”
Really?
This assertion by Obama makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Aside from the fact there is no evidence anywhere to support the President’s assertion that his plan “worked,” he’s claimed success in a city that had an unemployment rate of 13.7 percent as of this past May, higher than the national average of 8.2 percent at that same time [http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/01/news/economy/may-jobs-report/index.htm]. He also said this in spite of the more than 40 months of the national unemployment rate being over eight percent; in spite of the economy only adding 69,000 jobs last May; while 85k went on federal disability in June (and it is reported that 3.1 million workers entered disability while only 2.6 million jobs were created under the alleged Obama recovery) and in spite of the fact that the government has increased its debt $1 trillion dollars every year for the 5th straight year.
The President attempted to bolster his claims of success by appealing to the government’s so-called successful bailout of General Motors, which turns out would cost taxpayers $42 billion if the government sold its 500 million shares at the current share price according to an inspector general’s report. This amount doesn’t include the additional $2.9 billion the administration lost on the Chrysler bailout.
How did we get to the point where the government — at the behest of the President — bails out a private company (which included assuming partial ownership), calls a $42 billion dollar loss a success and then uses it as the rationalization for more of the same?
The disconnection this administration continues to show regarding economic policy is disturbing and it offers more proof that President Obama is more concerned with perpetuating the liberal agenda of growing the government than doing anything productive in contributing to a desperately-needed economic rebound.