President Barack Obama Now Adds Bill Clinton To Blame List For Lousy Recovery

President Barack Obama Now Adds Bill Clinton To Blame List For Lousy Recovery - Investors.com

Economy: No longer content to blame President Bush for the country's economic ills, President Obama now accuses his Democratic predecessor of being a co-conspirator. Will he stop at nothing to escape responsibility?

In his "60 Minutes" interview this weekend, Obama claimed the economy is suffering "structural problems that have been building up for two decades."

Let's see, in the past 20 years we've had three previous presidents, one of whom was two-term Democrat Bill Clinton.

Of course, Obama doesn't really mean to say Clinton is at fault. After all, he's tapped several Clinton alumni to advise him, including Gene Sperling, who has served as head of the National Economic Council in both administrations.

All Obama's trying to do here is give himself a bigger excuse for the fact that his own policies have completely failed. After all, how can anyone expect him to produce strong growth after decades of economic mismanagement?

"I've always believed that this was a long-term project," Obama told CBS's Steve Kroft, and that it "was gonna take more than a year. It was gonna take more than two years."

The problem is that, once upon a time, Obama was saying pretty much the exact opposite. Examples:

• On Feb. 2, 2009, Obama told the "Today Show" that "a year from now I think people are gonna see that we're starting to make some progress," and that "if I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."
On Feb. 12, 2009, he predicted that his $830 billion stimulus would "ignite spending by businesses and consumers" and unleash "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction ... all across America."

• On Feb. 26, 2009, Obama's first budget projected that by 2011 the economy would be cooking ahead at 4% real GDP growth, with unemployment at 7.1% and falling fast.

• On Feb. 7, 2010, he said "we are seeing the corner turn and the economy growing again."

• On June 4, 2010, Obama claimed the "economy is getting stronger by the day" and later that month said the recovery was "well under way."

It was only when the agonizingly slow pace of the recovery became obvious to everyone that Obama started pleading for patience and looking for someone or something else to blame.

And the longer the slog dragged on, the further back in time Obama has had to go with his finger pointing to affix blame.

The truth is, no one is to blame for the country's prolonged economic misery other than the current occupant of the White House.

Obama's prescription — massive spending, vast new regulations, a health care takeover and class warfare — has produced a recovery so weak that unemployment's never fallen below 8.6% since the recession ended 29 months ago, and GDP is a mere 0.1% above its pre-recession peak.

Now Obama is warning that dark clouds will last for years.

In contrast, when President Reagan confronted a comparably painful recession — the 1981-82 downturn lasted 16 months with unemployment peaking at 10.8% — he took the exact opposite approach.

Reagan cut taxes, deregulated the economy, championed the free market and worked to rein in spending during his two terms.

The result was that by this stage of the recovery, unemployment was just 7.3%, real GDP was 12% above its pre-recession peak, and Reagan was boasting that it was morning in America again.
In his "60 Minutes" interview, Obama said it could take "more than one president" to fix the economy.

He certainly has that part of the story right. And with any luck, that next president will be sworn in 13 months from now.

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