I like to be an eminently fair person, and I know that when we talk about economic growth rates during the Obama presidency, the first thing you will tell me is that he inherited a mess. And yes. He did. You want to lay the mess entirely at the feet of George W. Bush, and I disagree, but let's leave that aside and just stipulate what is obviously true: The poor state of the economy in the first few years of the Obama presidency cannot be blamed on his policies.
This is important as background, because now have yet another horrendous quarter of economic growth, with the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimating that the third quarter of 2015 will come in at a sluggish 1.5 percent in GDP growth. This, of course, follows a relatively strong second quarter that saw 3.9 percent growth, which followed a very weak first quarter that was just about 0.
These numbers will certainly jump around from one quarter to the next, and it's the long-term trend that matters. So in looking at the long-term trend, it's fair to ask when that trend should be seen to have started for Obama. If you included the eight quarters from 2009 and 2010, the overall trend would come out as a trainwreck of epic propotions. But let's not do that. I'm going to look at three things:
Obama and the Democrats passed their massive $862 billion stimulus package in 2009, and importantly, they spent that money immediately (then continued to spend it as a permanent part of the budget baseline every year thereafter).
Obama and the Democrats passed ObamaCare in 2010, ramping up to full implementation in 2014.
Obama and the Democrats first claimed we were in a "recovery summer" as a result of their policies in 2011.
So based on these three factors, I'm going to say Obama and the Democrats owned the economic growth numbers starting in 2011. With that said, let's look now at the pattern of quarterly growth for every quarter starting with 1Q 2011:
2011-1 -1.5
2011-2 2.9
2011-3 0.8
2011-4 4.6
2012-1 2.7
2012-2 1.9
2012-3 0.5
2012-4 0.1
2013-1 1.9
2013-2 1.1
2013-3 3.0
2013-4 3.8
2014-1 -0.9
2014-2 4.6
2014-3 4.3
2014-4 2.1
2015-1 0.6
2015-2 3.9
2015-3 1.5
What you see is a constant roller coaster ride of starts and stops, with the occasional strong quarter but almost never two consecutive strong quarters. Every time they claim they've got momentum and they're on a roll (1Q 2012, 4Q 2013, 3Q 2014), the following quarter comes in with a resounding thud. And it happened again in the quarter just passed. While the 3.9 percent reported in July sounded reasonably strong - even as it followed a horrible first quarter report in April, the economy once again couldn't sustain the strong performance and came in again at a mere 1.5 percent.
And most important is the average of the 19 quarters we're ascribing to Obama since the start of 2011, and that average is:
1.99 percent.
That, my friends, is terrible. Horrendously terrible. When the economy is clipping along, generating wealth and producing goods and services at a healthy pace, a quarter of 2 percent growth is a weak anomaly. During the Obama presidency, it's the average. (Technically it's even better than the average but we'll be generous and round up.)
And in case you need to be reminded why this horrible performance has taken place, let's review:
The Obama Administration thinks profits and investment income should be more heavily taxed, labor should cost more, regulation should be heavier and U.S. companies who earn money overseas should not be allowed to bring that money home without being punished for it.
That is not an atmosphere ripe for business-driven growth, which is the only kind of growth you're going to get.
Also not helping: The Obama Administration has diverted gobs of capital from productive sectors of the economy to pay for higher health insurance premiums that are delivering less value to people in the form of real quality care. And insurance exchanges are collapsing anyway because the economic model by which they were created makes no sense at all.
This is how Obama has given us a new normal of 2 percent growth, while trying to convince us it's the best we can reasonably expect.
Now I don't have a lot of positive things to say about the Jeb Bush campaign, but I will say this: Their focus on policies to achieve consistent growth of 4 percent or better is right on. This can be done and it would produce consistently stronger federal revenue without requiring higher tax rates. My problem with the Bush campaign (well, one of many to be accurate) is that they don't show much interest in reducing the size of government, figuring that stronger growth would finance the big government we have and everyone could be happy with that.
We need to do both - achieve stronger growth and reduce the size of government. I don't really have a favorite candidate right now but I'm looking for one who can show he (or she, looking at you, Carly) can master both ends of that equation. That candidate, of course, would be the opposite of Obama - who is failing spectacularly at both.
I like to be an eminently fair person, and I know that when we talk about economic growth rates during the Obama presidency, the first thing you will tell me is that he inherited a mess. And yes. He did. You want to lay the mess entirely at the feet of George W. Bush, and I disagree, but let's leave that aside and just stipulate what is obviously true: The poor state of the economy in the first few years of the Obama presidency cannot be blamed on his policies.
