The Republicans’ Desperate Trashing of the Obama Recovery
By Jonathan Chait
NYMag
WASHINGTON, DC
As the economic recovery picks up speed, Republicans have subtly altered their case. They increasingly emphasize that the economy is performing badly, as opposed to taking for granted that it’s awful and arguing about why. “Let’s not kid ourselves: this is the worst recovery ever from a serious recession, and history says the deeper the down, the sharper the up,” asserted Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on CNN’s State of the Union. “It should have been a very vigorous one. Hasn’t been.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson likewise charges, “The country’s economy might be improving, but it remains pathetically weak. Unemployment has remained north of 8 percent for three years — the longest period since the Great Depression.”
Worst recovery ever? Worst recovery since the Great Depression? How bad has the economy actually been under Obama, and what standard should we be judging him against?
Daniels’s claim that this is the “worst recovery ever” is problematic. The recovery is still quite young. If we undergo a double-dip recession, Daniels’s description may be accurate. If growth accelerates, it will be a horrendous prediction of the sort he specialized in during his tenure as George W. Bush’s budget director. The only way to judge a recovery is in full, when it has run its course. By the way, the title of “worst recovery ever” would probably go to the one Daniels helped craft under Bush, which, measured peak-to-peak (meaning, not taking into account the crash in which it culminated) featured historically rock-bottom levels of income and job growth. I wouldn’t blame Bush’s policies for the anemic job growth that followed their enactment, but the record certainly complicates the still deeply embraced Republican notion that Clinton-era tax rates were holding back growth.
(More here.)
NYMag
WASHINGTON, DC
As the economic recovery picks up speed, Republicans have subtly altered their case. They increasingly emphasize that the economy is performing badly, as opposed to taking for granted that it’s awful and arguing about why. “Let’s not kid ourselves: this is the worst recovery ever from a serious recession, and history says the deeper the down, the sharper the up,” asserted Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on CNN’s State of the Union. “It should have been a very vigorous one. Hasn’t been.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson likewise charges, “The country’s economy might be improving, but it remains pathetically weak. Unemployment has remained north of 8 percent for three years — the longest period since the Great Depression.”
Worst recovery ever? Worst recovery since the Great Depression? How bad has the economy actually been under Obama, and what standard should we be judging him against?
Daniels’s claim that this is the “worst recovery ever” is problematic. The recovery is still quite young. If we undergo a double-dip recession, Daniels’s description may be accurate. If growth accelerates, it will be a horrendous prediction of the sort he specialized in during his tenure as George W. Bush’s budget director. The only way to judge a recovery is in full, when it has run its course. By the way, the title of “worst recovery ever” would probably go to the one Daniels helped craft under Bush, which, measured peak-to-peak (meaning, not taking into account the crash in which it culminated) featured historically rock-bottom levels of income and job growth. I wouldn’t blame Bush’s policies for the anemic job growth that followed their enactment, but the record certainly complicates the still deeply embraced Republican notion that Clinton-era tax rates were holding back growth.
(More here.)
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