Recently, former President Barack Obama has come forth from the the shadows to wade into the progressive political quagmire professing resistance to anything and everything Republicans in Congress or President Donald Trump does. At a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama derided claims that some of the greatest economic numbers in the last 50 years, possibly even American history, are occurring under the tutelage of the Trump Administration.
“When you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started,” Obama said during the speech, as reported by The Daily Caller. “I’m glad it’s continued but when you hear about this economic miracle that’s been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, suddenly Republicans are saying ‘It’s a miracle.’ I have to remind them — actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.”
Following Obama’s display of self-congratulations in Illinois, the White House tasked one of their top economists to fact-check the former president.
Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, showed a series of charts and data points at a recent press briefing while explaining that there are multiple economic trends that swung in the positive direction when President Trump was elected.
He cited small business optimism, which is now higher than it was even under President Reagan in the 1980s, spiking to 108.8 in August, according to the NFIB’s index.
Non-residential fixed investments were also the highest in years. The figure, which includes spending on equipment, structures, and intellectual property, increased by 8.5 percent during the second financial quarter, as reported by Investor’s Business Daily.
Capital spending is now at the highest level since 2007 – before the Great Recession.
Hassett also cited durable goods orders, the purchasing manager index, and new businesses created as reasons the Trump Administration should bear more of the responsibility for the booming U.S. economy.
“You have to look at the moment that President Trump was elected in both equity markets and incentive surveys,” Hassett said. “People started to ratchet up their expectations for the economy.”
After all, continuing over a year of strong domestic growth, during the second financial quarter of 2018, the U.S. economy expanded by a rate of 4.2 percent, the fastest pace in nearly four years.
Even the Associated Press (AP) – the media company that was awe-stricken during the eight years of the Obama Presidency and everything he did – fact-checked the former president, releasing a report entitled, “Obama doesn’t always tell the straight story.”
At the Illinois rally, Obama said, “The actions we took during that crisis [the Great Recession] returned the economy to healthy growth and initiated the longest streak of job creation on record.”
The facts, AP lays out, are that while “He’s right on jobs…whether the economy experienced ‘healthy growth’ is a matter of dispute.”
“As measured by the gross domestic product [GDP], the broadest measure of the economy’s output, the U.S. economy expanded at an average annual rate of 2.2 percent from 2010, after the Great Recession ended, through 2016, Obama’s last year in office,” the reports states.
Unfortunately for the former president, “That is the weakest growth of any post-recession recovery since World War II,” AP writes.
When the former cheerleaders of the Obama Administration begin to criticize the former president, that means something is definitely wrong with the narrative.
Obama said years ago that three percent growth in GDP is impossible. While he was campaigning for president, Trump said four percent not good enough. Well, it seems someone was wrong.