It’s interesting to watch people blaming President Obama for the economic morass that he inherited. Not since 1933 has a President inherited such a complete clusterfuck economically, and even FDR didn’t inherit two major wars without an end in sight.
President Obama’s critics would like to blame him for the jobs lost in January of 2009 even though he was sworn into office on January 20th of 2009. His critics would like to blame him somehow for the 820,000 jobs that were lost in January (source)…and they’d like to blame him for the 716,000 jobs lost in February of 2009. They’d like to blame him for another 750,000 jobs lost in March 0f 2009. In those three months alone – the United States lost 2.2 MILLION jobs on top of the 3.6 million jobs lost in all of 2008. So – the question is…how quickly can a President’s policies (if Congress will enact them) reasonably affect the economy.
Paul Krugman essentially contrasts the private jobs record of George W. Bush with President Obama either from Day 1 or excluding their first year in office. The numbers are the numbers…and there is no question that Obama’s economic record is actually impressive considering what he inherited and the tremendous amount of intentional derailing he has received from the Republican party. You can read more about how Obama created 4.2 million private jobs in the past 27 months HERE.
Paul Krugman explains the graph above – article HERE:
Since former President Bush is going to favor us with a book on How to Succeed in Economic Policy Without Really Trying — and since Mitt Romney is essentially planning a return to Bushonomics — it might be worth looking at Bush’s job record compared with that of Obama so far. I focus on private-sector jobs because both Bush and Romney say that the government can’t create jobs, so only the private sector is real.
So compare private-sector job creation from January 2001 to January 2009 — the Bush era — with job creation from January 2009 to April 2012. Or maybe you think presidents shouldn’t be held accountable for their first year, and want to start either comparison from the first January after inauguration.
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[...] When Obama took over – the deficit was just over $1 trillion. In the first three months of his presidency – the country lost 2.2 million jobs on top of the 3.6 million jobs the country lost in all of 2008 (source) [...]
[...] – not only has the country created 4 million private sector jobs since January of 2010 (source); Obama’s record on jobs is thus far significantly better than under George W. Bush according [...]
[...] Another way to compare this … if you look at the chart below – Bush’s #’s are for his full 8 years while Obama’s jobs numbers are only up through April of 2012. This chart comes courtesy of Paul Krugman and we’ve written about it HERE. [...]
[...] After President Obama’s policies helped stabilize the economy within a year – since January of 2010 this country has seen over 4 million private sector jobs created. That’s a fact. And if you compare the jobs record of Obama vs. Bush – Obama’s jobs record wins hands down. More on that HERE. [...]
[...] We’ve already shared this information from Paul Krugman before … there is simply no way that you can compare Bush’s jobs record and Obama’s jobs record and conclude Bush did a better growing private sector employment. The numbers simply don’t bear that out but conservatives don’t want to admit it. Like we shared HERE: [...]