Put the president on a late-night comedian's show, and he's probably got a pretty good chance of getting away with misleading statements like several he made last night on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." And the one that really sticks in my craw is this one: "The economy is growing."
Well, sure. A 14-year-old boy's "moustache" is growing, but it's nothing to brag about. To say the economy is growing is merely to say that we are not in a recession at the moment. Some accomplishment. The pace of growth is what matters, and after the horrific recession that followed the mortgage market meltdown in 2008, the pace of growth under Obama has crept along at a mere 2.0 percent on an annualized basis. Typical growth in a recovery that follows a recession would be twice that.
In the first two quarters of this year, we've seen growth of only 1.2 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively. The media tried to help Obama out by declaring the second quarter "better than expected," but that's completely meaningless. What matters is not what some wild-guessing economists "expected." It's what you need to really bring down unemployment and elevate the creation of wealth. To do that on a healthy, robust basis, you would need consistent growth of at least 4.0 percent. That would not only create jobs, it would also increase that tax base so you could raise more revenue and reduce the deficit without raising rates.
When Obama exclaims "the economy is growing," his implicaiton is that this is some great achievement. It's not. The economy is almost always growing. But when it's growing at a rate of less than 2.0 percent, it's not restoring the prosperity and employment opportunities we enjoyed before the recession.
Obama knows this, of course. He only makes misleading statements like "the economy is growing" because he knows he can get away with it - and he figures the audience for shows like "The Tonight Show" consist of lots of low-information voters who won't know the difference. Any low-information voters who are reading this: You are now informed. The Obama economy is growing at a snail's pace! Don't let him or anyone else tell you it's good.
