2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumObama's economic policies cannot be reasonably said to have failed
because he's not the only person affecting economic policies in this country and, contrary to what Republican propagandists like Senator Mitch McConnell say, President Obama did not "get everything he wanted" in terms of legislation passed in Congress.
Of the policies for which he and the Democrats are plainly responsible for, it's hard to say how they have "failed" except, perhaps, to say that they weren't big enough. Of the remainder of the policies that have been enacted since the 2010 midterms and were heavily Republican-influenced, nobody can reasonably make the argument that President Obama and the Democrats bear full responsibility for the current state of the economy. Republicans may say that they don't want to "co-own" the economy, well, they kind of do since they have controlled a substantial part of Congress since 2011 and have been able to continue to keep business tightly bottled up in the Senate.
President Obama's signature stimulus package-that nearly all Republicans wanted NOTHING to do with- helped stem job losses and kept state governments from sinking any further into the abyss. Maybe it wasn't big enough nor effective enough in producing new jobs but I would argue that, if nothing else, it turned the tide and started to help dig us out of the 2008 financial disaster. Although not enacted by Congress, his assistance with government loans to GM helped keep the auto industry alive and people employed.
Beyond that, the only other major economic policies implemented have been an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts from 2001 & 2003 (as part of a "compromise" in order to get the Republicans to agree to an extension of unemployment benefits) and a spate of Republican-inspired government spending cuts and other austerity measures such as the "Budget Control Act" that were jammed through to keep government operating and avoid a default on our debts (see the 2011 "debt-ceiling debacle" , none of which has done much good for economy and certainly not helped improve the job growth situation. The one piece of legislation that has been proposed that has been estimated to actually create jobs (not the phony "jobs bills" advanced by the Republicans in the House) is President Obama's proposed "American Jobs Act", which was introduced last fall but has, in short, gone nowhere because of GOP obstructionism in the House and Senate.
It's obviously hard to know how things might have been had the stimulus been bigger, if the Bush tax cuts had expired, if there had been less cuts to government spending, or if the American Jobs Act had been passed and signed into law but blaming President Obama's economic policies for the still anemic state of economic recovery and harping on President Obama and the Democrats for "not passing a budget" is wildly disingenuous if not entirely untrue. If you view how the economy was doing from around the time the stimulus became law and money started flowing to the states until the point at which the Republicans took the House and boosted their numbers in the Senate (not to mention the kick in the gut the economy took from the "debt ceiling debacle" last year), it seems as though the Republicans whom owe the American public an "apology" for the failure of THEIR OWN policies (i.e. tax cuts, spending cuts), as well as their repeated attempts at sabotaging President Obama's efforts to repair the mess that his predecessor's economic policies and fiscal (mis-)management of the country created.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)"REASONABLY"
With reason being in short supply in the gop and its supporters.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,338 posts)*sigh*
Still need to rant a bit after listening to the nonsense, ignorance, and stupidity day in, day out.
progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)Literally. Now there's hundreds. I know that my ex's company has hired 15 new workers since 2009, and has doubled their profit (while paying new staff members.) I know that my Realtor friends have been working so hard with numerous home sales this year, that they can't catch a breath. I know that my friends with money in the Stock Market have done well and made back what they lost under Bush.
I know that in my town, there have been numerous new shops and restaurants that opened since 2009, that have more biz than they can handle.
We may never recover from what Bush and his cronies did to our economy, but we can get back to a place where everyone has a chance at a job in America... but not electing the same damn people that put us here. We need to control Congress and Senate, too. The republicans voted 400 times for investigating the govt, but have NOT voted on that jobs bill which could people people back to work, and shave the unemployment numbers.
But all I know, is what I see every day. And pretty soon, people will stop using that stupid and cliched term "in this economy," and just accept that their business is doing well, that their house sold the first week, and that they have a job.
Igel
(35,173 posts)At least not with a trench digger.
Much of the same can be said about any president. Some you win, some you lose, some you muddle through with. Like the first stimulus for the 2008 recession. * billed it as a win. So did (D). It was clearly a "muddle through with."
We still have no trouble saying that all things are Obama's, however; it's just the negatives and ambiguities that he shares responsibility for.
Personally, I think you set the bar just about right. That's where it pretty much should always be set. The president presides. He's not the controller. At best he decides some things, but in the end 150 million adult citizens each have some decision authority as well. Not to mention the 2.2 or so billion adults abroad.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,338 posts)It's amazing that anybody actually thought that things would get better with a divided government partially controlled by teabaggers. Everybody here knew it was going to be a trainwreck a mile away.