Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I have said it before and I will keep saying it: This shapeshifter, Willard "Mittens" Romney, is a shameless liar.
The latest lie that Mittens, as well as many other Tea-Publicans, likes to tell is that "Obama made the recession worse." This, of course, is demonstrably false to any sensient human being. Greg Sargent at the Plum Line explains. Mitt Romney again repeats debunked claim that Obama made recession “worse”:
No matter how many times independent fact checkers debunk it, Mitt Romney will continue making the claim. The Boston Globe reports:
“He did not cause this recession, but he made it worse,” Romney said during a visit to the lead presidential primary state, here he has staked much of his campaign. “It will be essential to have a person who understands how the economy works, understands what it takes to create and grow jobs, in the White House.”
The Globe piece doesn’t tell you this, but Romney’s claim — which is now central to his sales pitch — has been repeatedly knocked down. After Romney made the assertion his announcement speech, fact checkers demolished it.
As Post fact checker Glenn Kessler noted, the National Bureau of Economic Research said the recession ended in June of 2009. Kessler concluded: “with NBER saying the economy is now out of a recession, it is difficult to see how Romney can claim that Obama made it worse.”
The Associated Press, meanwhile, pointed out that the gross domestic product, the prime measure of economic strength, picked up modestly after he took office, adding that while unemployment is still very high, the “recession officially ended six months into his presidency.”
“Obama did not, as Romney alleged, make the economy worse than it was when he took office,” the AP concluded.
Yet Romney is cheerfully repeating the bogus claim again.
Steve Benen suggests the questions that the media villagers ought to be asking the Tea-Publicans every time they repeat this oft-debunked lie. Political Animal – Romney won’t let reality get in the way:
Let me make this easy for Romney and the reporters who cover his campaign. It’s a surprisingly straightforward exercise, consisting of two short questions:
1. When Obama took office, the economy was shrinking. Now it’s growing. In what way is that “worse”?
2. When Obama took office, the economy was hemorrhaging jobs. Now it’s gaining jobs. In what way is that “worse”?
As best as I can tell, there are basically only three explanations. Romney is either lying and hoping no one will notice; he doesn’t know what “worse” means; or he considers a healthier economy worse than a deep recession.
Which is it, Mitt?
As Benen notes in a later post, "We generally don’t see the media do this — facts appear to have a well known liberal bias…"
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There are fewer jobs today than in the year 2000. The Bush years were a lost decade. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years (all in his second term during the real estate bubble). http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
All of those jobs were lost and more during the Bush Great Recession: The total number of jobs lost from the pre-recession peak until the February 2010 bottom: 8.8 million. http://demomemo.blogspot.com/2011/04/jobs-lost-during-great-recession.html. Another 1.2 million jobs were lost in the following months until employment bottomed out in February 2010. (There has been very modest job growth since then, but not nearly enough as I point out in each monthly jobs report).
This is the result of GOP economic policies which have continued under President Obama. I would agree that Obama’s biggest mistake is his failure to drive a stake in the heart of faith based supply-side “trickle down” GOP economics and return to the Keynesian economic model that served us so well for many decades. But Obama has been faced with militant Tea-Publicans in Congress who are engaged in economic terrorism against their fellow American citizens. The fault lies in GOP economic policies, not with the man who is doing what is possible to get us out of the very deep hole dug by Republicans.
You are correct to assume that the vast majority of voters continue to be affected by the recession (I argue: a depression), to them it is worse. I also like a comment from Bush Senior who said in his term: that to an unemployed person, the unemployment rate is 100%).
The slight increases are encouraging, but it certainly will take some years to feel differently.
What the piece is pointing out (and the polls support) is that just because tens of millions are still feeling the effects of the recession, is no point to politically lie. The facts bear out the true story.
In my mind both parties are making this recession linger by politicizing the facts. Voters are not stupid, but we know they are led and both parties to bear the fault of leading/misleading voters.
The media is more than complicit in mis truths. Obama’s failures are many, but we voters do not need to be lied to to prove a ponit, it just makes the lier much more of a failure.
Try and convince the American people that the recession is over. They ain’t buying it. To them it is worse than when Obama took office. Unemployment is higher for sure.
Romney’s words ring true with most of us. Your attempts to convince us seem like a desperate attempt to prop up a failed Obama presidency.