Yes, we are better off than we were 4 years ago
"Are we better off than we were four years ago?" has become the GOP mantra in the last week.
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2010 photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP
President Obama
2010 photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP
President Obama
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Apparently, they long for the halcyon days of the 2008-09 economic meltdown. After years of telling us that it's backward looking for President Obama to remind voters of the trash heap of an economy Republicans handed him, they have suddenly begun to wax nostalgic for one of the worst economic periods in American history and can't stop asking how people felt as they watched their retirement savings disappear into thin air.
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Is there a single American who would honestly say they were better off in September 2008 than today? Weirdly, there are, at least according to multiple polls.But, as some wise person once said, feelings are not facts.
Let's take a little trip down memory lane. Here is a headline from CNN on Sept. 15, 2008 : "Lehman Brothers collapse stuns global markets." Oh, the good old days of the American banking system imploding. The end of 2008 brought us also the near collapse of Merrill Lynch , AIG , Goldman Sachs and other behemoths that had to be rescued by the U.S. government. Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson titled his book about this period On the Brink , fairly summing up that terrifying time in our history.
Republicans are literally telling Americans that they were better off four years ago when our economy was on the verge of complete collapse. It was the Troubled Asset Relief Program — pushed by President Bush and implemented in the first six months of the Obama administration — that stabilized our economy. In case you forgot, TARP also enraged the GOP base, spawned the Tea Party movement and is now denounced by many Republicans who voted for it, including Paul Ryan , except when they are giving George W. Bush credit for saving the financial system by passing TARP.
In the GOP's misty-water colored memories of those grand times four years ago is also the near collapse of the American auto industry. The bailout was an unmitigated success, and one that Mitt Romney vigorously opposed, saying that if it were enacted, "you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." Compare that with the news Tuesday in The New York Times: "Major automakers reported … that sales grew 19.9% in August despite higher gas prices during the month."
Is it better to have the auto industry on the brink of collapse or to have one with growing sales?
Then there is the employment situation four years ago. In September 2008 we lost 159,000 jobs. The month that Obama took the oath of office, January 2009, the economy lost 800,000 jobs. Are we better off losing thousands of jobs in one month or adding private-sector jobs to the economy, as we have been doing for 29 months?
What about the stock market? Reuters reported last month , "At 1,400, the S&P 500 … was closing in on a four-year high and was up 74% since Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama took office. Not since Dwight Eisenhower 's first term has a president had such a strong run for their first term."
Former Merrill Lynch strategist Richard Bernstein told Reuters, "The stock market is a barometer not of the absolute level of the economy but of improvement in the economy. There is no doubt the economy has improved in the last four years."
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Busloads of economists have testified to the positive impact of Obama's stimulus, and yet the GOP continues to claim it was a complete failure. Mark Zandi , chief economist of Moody's Analytics and a former McCain adviser, has said that without the stimulus, unemployment would be much higher than it is. Harvard economist and former Reagan and Bush adviser Martin Feldstein supported the Obama stimulus, and his only criticism is that it wasn't large enough (thanks to the GOP).
None of this is to say that Obama has done things perfectly or that there aren't serious issues still facing the country, not the least of which is our out-of-control debt. But to suggest that we were better off four years ago is simply absurd.
Oh, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
Kirsten Powers is a columnist for The Daily Beast , a Fox News political analyst and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. She served in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998
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