The Economy Under President Obama

The Republicans want America to believe that President Obama has done a poor job of overseeing the American economy. They know that their only chance of regaining the White House and Senate (and keeping control of the House of Representatives) is to convince the voters that President Obama has done worse with the economy than George W. Bush did (or at least as bad).

They must make people believe that because they have no new economic policy to offer. They are still trying to push the same old failed "trickle-down" economic policy of Reagan/Bush -- the policy that threw this nation into recession, cost the country millions of jobs, and created a vast gap in wealth and income between the rich and the rest of America.

But, as usual, the truth is quite different from what the Republican Party claims it is. While the economy has not improved as much as we had hoped it would, it has improved under the guidance of President Obama -- and it is now in much better shape than when President Bush left office. Bush and the congressional Republicans left the economy in a real mess.

President Obama has taken that Republican economic mess and made it better. And the most remarkable thing is that he has done it in spite of the congressional Republicans trying to kill, block, or otherwise obstruct everything the president has tried to do. There is much more that needs to be done to restore the American economy to a healthy status (with massive job creation), but it can't be done without a Congress willing to cooperate/compromise for the good of the country (which is a very good reason to vote as many Republicans out of office as possible in November).

The two charts above (from the CNN website) show the growth in jobs and the growth of GDP under President Obama's stewardship. If you look beneath the fold you will find several other charts on various aspects of the economy (like inflation, the stock market, home foreclosures, home prices, industrial production, gas prices, interest rates, unemployment rate and consumer spending).