"By almost every measure, the American economy and American workers are better off than when I took office,” President Obama insisted at a Milwaukee Laborfest Rally. Yet Investor’s Business Daily counters:
Time was, they had fact-checkers at the White House. They must've had the weekend off when President Obama let go a whopper at a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee. …
Median household income…is down by more than $2,000 in real terms since Obama moved into the Oval Office in January 2009 and has dropped $1,600 since the recession officially ended five months later.
One big reason household incomes have stalled is that labor force participation has fallen by 3 percentage points, representing an added 7 million Americans not even seeking employment. When people don't work, their income falls effectively to zero.
This vaunted recovery is half the normal pace in terms of job creation and GDP growth, according to a report from the Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. JEC also reports this is the weakest rebound from a recession since the Great Depression.
We are 5 million jobs below where the president's economic team told us we would be when they sold on the snake oil of a $830 billion fiscal stimulus plan.
After 5-1/2 years in the White House, Obama has added almost $7 trillion in debt with little to show for it — unless you count 46 million Americans on food stamps as an accomplishment.
The president went on to blame Republicans in Congress for not advancing any number of ill-advised big government policies he favors, including minimum wage, salary, family leave, and equal pay mandates. Yet as IBD continued:
The last time we looked, Democrats and Harry Reid still ran the Senate, and that's been the graveyard of economic growth policies. …
What Obama covets is that rubber stamp he had in the first two years of his presidency — a stamp that approved ObamaCare, the stimulus, tax increases on investment, Dodd-Frank, cash for clunkers, bail-outs and a grand expansion of the welfare state.