dropdeadpolitics

Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

162,000 new jobs were created in March, the most in three years. This is a tremendous turnaround compared to the 600,000 we were losing every month when Obama first took office. This is just one month but the importance of these numbers cannot be overlooked. It appears we are emerging from the longest and deepest economic down turn since the Great Depression and a large part of that success has to be attributed to the policies Obama has managed or initiated since taking office.

September 2008 looked to be the start of an economic fall that could have lead to a second Great Depression. During that time stocks plummeted, major financial institutions crumbled and the country was on the brink of economic disaster. The Bush administration in close consultation with Obama and McCain came up with TARP, Troubled Asset Relief Program designed to buy up toxic assets that were threatening to bring down our economy.

Once Obama won the election he immediately put together an economic team to manage the TARP program making sure to maximize the tax payers investment ensuring that “too big to fail” institutions were strengthened. The program was met with a populace outrage and became very unpopular as these institutions paid out billions in bonuses to the very employees who helped create the economic crisis. The bonuses were in bad taste but amounted to a fraction of the overall picture. TARP may not have been popular but most economists agree that it helped stave off another depression.

Once Obama was President he went to work and passed the biggest economic recovery package in our history without a single GOP vote. This package gave 95% of Americans a tax cut, extended unemployment benefits, patched up state budgets and invested in domestic initiatives all in attempt to soften the impact of the recession. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that it has created or saved nearly 2 million jobs in 2009 with half the money yet spent. The stimulus is still infusing billions into our economy and is designed to help fuel growth as the private sector recovers from the recession.

We still have a long way to go until our economy fully recovers but it is clear we heading in the right direction. 5.6% GDP growth and now the strongest job numbers in 3 years are good indicators that our economy is strengthening. Hopefully we can string together several months of job growth and bring down the unemployment rates. The new jobs will bring additional revenue to the federal government and go a long way towards helping bring our deficits under control.

All these policies were enacted by Democrats without any GOP support. The GOP decided to play politics, betting against the American people and against a recovery in the hopes of using the bad economic situation to win seats in the November mid term races. It appears that this strategy will backfire as the the economy is growing, creating jobs and get stronger each day. Combine that with their obstruction over the health reform bill and it’s clear that the GOP does not have much to run on. They peaked in popularity last summer and miscalculated that that momentum could be sustained through the mid term elections. They felt emboldened by the polls and dug themselves in ideologically, painting themselves into a political corner with no escape.