On Monday Barack Obama laughably tried to link his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with the booming economy claiming it paved the way "for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.”
President Trump didn’t mince words and accused Obama of "trying to take credit" for the Trump economy.
“Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration,” Trump tweeted. “He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers ever.”
“Had to rebuild our military, which was totally depleted. Fed Rate UP, taxes and regulations WAY DOWN," Trump added.
Simply put, Trump is right. There have been eleven recessions since World War II, each of which was followed by a recovery. We did experience an economic recovery under Obama—it just happens it was the worst one. Here are the facts: All jobs lost in post-World War II recessions were recovered after an average of twenty-five months. But, it took seventy-seven months for employment to return to pre-recession levels, making Obama’s recovery the slowest recovery of all of them, and by a wide margin. Obama is also the only president in U.S. history to have never had a single year of 3.0 percent or greater GDP growth.
Economic growth during Obama’s presidency was so bad that mediocre economic growth was considered the new normal. In September 2016, CBS News reported that "with U.S. economic growth stuck in low gear for several years, it's leading many economists to worry that the country has entered a prolonged period where any expansion will be weaker than it has been in the past."
Investor’s Business Daily noted that there was “no upward trajectory to the economy on anyone's radar when Trump took office,” but “now that the economy is outperforming everyone's expectations, Trump's critics want to pretend that the current boom was already baked in the cake.”
Obama trying to take credit for the Trump economy is almost as laughable as Obama claiming to be scandal-free.
If Obama thinks he can claim credit for the booming economy—and that it will work—he’s got another thing coming. A recent Gallup poll shows that most Americans credit President Trump for the economy.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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