PERRspectives: The Obama Economic Miracle
"After all, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress didn't just bring the nation back from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. He rescued the American economy despite unprecedented Republican opposition on Capitol Hill and draconian austerity policies in the states. And Obama achieved all this in the face of an-going conservative disinformation campaign propagating the myth that he "made the economy worse." The numbers--unemployment down to 5.9%, a record 55 straight months of private sector job creation, the second-quarter posting the highest rate of GDP expansion since 2007--tell the tale of the rebound from what almost became Great Depression 2.0. While George W. Bush shed over 400,000 private sector jobs as part of what even the Wall Street Journal called "the worst track record on record," President Obama has added 6 million so far. Doomsday right-wing warnings about the "Obama bear market" have disappeared as the Dow Jones doubled since he entered the Oval Office. (Helping Americans' financial prospects further is the fact that at least 13 million more of us now have health insurance, thanks to Obamacare.) Even with his $800 billion stimulus program and the launch of the Affordable Care Act, the annual budget deficit has been cut in half since Barack Obama first took the oath of office. Contrary to Republican myth-making, federal spending has hardly budged during Obama's tenure. Meanwhile, with the exception of Germany, the United States has outperformed every other country in Europe."
