1/20/09, that glorious day that Bush haters plastered all over their cars for years. I decided to go back see what President Obama had to say about the economy and how he would address it.
Obama Inaugural Address
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift.
Bold action requires leadership and President Obama has shown none, especially early on during the stimulus debate. How did the uniter-in-chief, Mr. New Way of Doing Business in Washington, set the tone? Four days into his administration, he made it clear how he felt about governing,
President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning – but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
That’s right. He won. And he got his way. His stimulus plan. The “bold” action we got was the $800B Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Perhaps you’ve seen the signs? Anyway, there was nothing bold about the Obama stimulus plan. From the left you had Paul Krugman arguing that $800 billion was far too small. Many others argued that Obama showed zero leadership, essentially handing the job to Nancy, Harry and the Gang. What could go wrong? Well, if your President Obama running for re-election, the fact that you said, if you get your stimulus plan, unemployment would peak at 8%. That’s a problem. You got your plan, and unemployment went to 10% and currently sits above 9%.
Obama Inaugural Address
And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
According to an Associated Press analysis reviewed by independent economists at five universities, the $20 billion spent nationwide on infrastructure so far “has had no effect on local unemployment rates.â€
Even worse is Obama’s green energy fallacy. Candidate Obama infamously promised to raise energy prices to painfully high levels in the name of Climate Change, or whatever they call it this week.
Now at a time of severe economic weakness, he is making his insane plan a reality, from Heritage’s Foundry blog,
President Obama’s infamous words—saying electricity rates will “necessarily skyrocket†under his cap-and-trade program that would impose a costly energy tax on American consumers—are set to come true. Just ask the market.
Although cap and trade is not law, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) backdoor train wreck of energy regulations is forcing utilities to file for significant rate hikes in years to come because of the upgrades they will have to make or the complete shutdown of older plants…
…A new analysis from the National Economic Research Associates (NERA) looked at just two of those regulations, the Clean Air Transport Rule and the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT). The study finds “Average U.S. retail electricity prices in 2016 would increase by about 12%, with regional increases as much as about 24%.â€
American households will be hit hard, as will American businesses. Producers everywhere will try to cover their higher production costs by raising product prices. As a result, consumer demand will fall, and income and employment will drop. There’s no other way to put it: These are unnecessary job-killing, economy-destroying regulations.
Not content to regulate our way to economic depression, President Obama is still at it, putting the wrong people in government at the highest levels. Look around you. Think about what is going on economically in this country, and think for a minute of a President STILL appointing these Dreamweavers to central plan our economic recovery.
President Obama’s nominee for Commerce secretary, John Bryson, is good news for the environmental community and his nomination could foreshadow a renewed White House push for cap and trade.
The Obama economic policies and people are a fire blanket on our economic engine, the only problem, the engine isn’t on fire, its barely alive. The combination of his people and policies have led to economic paralysis.
Obama Inaugural Address
And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
About that vital trust, Mr. President. Lying to the American people a bit less would be a good place to start. You lied continuously throughout the health care debate, and refused to stop lying about it, even when repeatedly pointed out by Fack Check groups. Now that is arrogance personified, not to mention a complete lack of respect for the people who’s trust you are “allegedly” trying to gain.
Unfortunately, the outright lies have continued on virtually all subjects, from the Republicans budget plan, according to FactCheck.org, to the auto bailout, where according to the Washington Post, President Obama delivered a speech so fundamentally dishonest that,
What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.
According to Judicial Watch, on transparency, Obama is worse than Bush. If that isn’t bad enough, his “jobs saved or created” canard was universally mocked, and rightly so. The farce went far beyond that, there was fundamental dishonesty, full-blown three card monte with the public’s money. How bad? The MSM noticed!
More than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were “created or saved” by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary, according to reports compiled from eleven major newspapers and the Associated Press.
Based only on our analysis of stimulus media coverage in the last two weeks, The Examiner has created this interactive map to document exaggerated stimulus claims. The map, which will be updated as new revelations appear, currently reflects an exaggeration by the Obama administration of about 75,000 jobs, out of the 640,000 jobs supposedly “created or saved.”
..The Obama administration has claimed that the $787 billion economic stimulus package “saved or created” some 650,000 jobs. But almost as soon as the White House trotted out this figure, news organizations found huge exaggerations in the reported data. Many of the jobs reportedly created do not exist or cannot be accounted for.
UPDATE: Today’s report from ABC News tells us that prior to releasing its jobs report, the administration cut out 60,000 additional jobs from unreliable reports, none of which appear to overlap with the ones we’ve highlighted here. Had those jobs been included in the original count, the number of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus would have exceeded 700,000, and the number of imaginary or doubtful jobs would have approached 20 percent.
Based on his words, and the standards he set for himself, I can reach no other conclusion than President Obama is a terrible failure, in both words and deeds. He can’t lead because he’s never led. He can’t fix our economy because he’s never been a part of it, never created a single job. He can’t be honest with the American people because, well, he’s a politician.
He hasn’t brought a new way of business to Washington. He hasn’t brought people together. He hasn’t listened to new or opposing ideas, he’s continuously lied about his opponents and questioned their motives. The man is over his head, it should be obvious to all now.
President Obama is a failure by the standards he set for himself, not by those of the Tea Party, Fox News or right wing bloggers. It’s so obvious it’s almost as painful as reading economic data.