A picture tells a thousand words, and economist Michael Norman’s graphs here tell the whole story of Obama’s economic record, and why he should run strongly and proudly on it — and why we should not concede an inch to Republicans and their distortions on the matter.
In these graphs, the frightening free fall of the economy in 2008 and early 2009 is shown — with the clear trend of the economy surging back up following passage of the president’s Recovery Act in February 2009. The data are honestly displayed, showing where recovery has been painfully slow (e.g., housing and employment), but demonstrating quite dramatically how most of the fundamentals of the economy (like GDP, personal income, industrial production, etc.) rebounded from rock bottom and have stayed positive since then.
Plain and simple, the stimulus WORKED. Unfortunately, the Republicans who took over Congress in 2010 have blocked further efforts to bolster our economy, leading to significant stagnation, particularly on public sector employment, as the president noted the other day.
Oh, and by the way, don’t believe all the hype about these dollars being unaccountably squandered on boondoggles. If you want to know where the money went and how its being used, to what ends, this information is documented to an unprecedented level of detail at Recovery.gov — and the site even invites software developers to develop apps to allow for more transparency and analysis.
Obama quite simply rescued us from the brink of economic disaster to which Republican policies had carried us — and to which they will again if we let them.
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
