The Patriot Post® · Obama's Failed Record Is Hillary's Platform

Yes, it was a significant recession, deep enough to earn the title “Great Recession.” But since the Great Depression, there have been several recessions that, at the time they occurred, were called the “Great Recession.”

No recession since the Great Depression, including the latest incarnation of the Great Recession, has come anywhere close to the horrible conditions during the 1930s. Thus, Barack Obama’s citing of the Great Recession falls short in excusing the dismal economy and the failed Obama recovery. The lousy economy is due to faulty policies since the “official” end of the recession in June 2009.

As the end of Obama’s presidency (mercifully) nears, the U.S. is more than $19 trillion in debt — it nearly doubled during Obama’s presidency. At a seriously high $10.6 trillion when he began his spending spree, Obama’s statist expansion has added about a trillion dollars for each of his eight years in office.

During the Obama “recovery,” Gross Domestic Product has not once reached 3% annually. “Adding insult to injury,” The Daily Signal reported in February, “Obama coupled an incredibly weak economic recovery with a more than trillion-dollar tax hike. By allegedly making the rich ‘pay their fair share’ through the $620 billion (2013-2022) fiscal cliff tax increase, the administration really pushed for everyday Americans to sacrifice lower take-home pay for more government spending and intervention in their lives.”

Obama has claimed the creation of millions of jobs. “We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history,” he boasted. “More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990s; an unemployment rate cut in half.”

Well, sort of. When a recession produces job losses, the recovery — even a poor recovery like this one — produces some “new jobs.” But according to some estimates, 9.3 million, not 14 million, new jobs were created. And a president creates almost exactly zero of them.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that the U-6 unemployment rate reflects “total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.” At the end of May, the U-6 rate was 9.7%.

These unemployed, discouraged workers who have stopped looking for a job, and underemployed workers are not counted in the unemployment figure the administration brags about, but are nonetheless part of the American workforce, which totals 243 million people, and currently more than 90 million of them are unemployed or underemployed, putting the workforce participation rate at a decades-low 62.6%.

In a May open-ended Gallop survey, participants noted general economic issues as the most important thing on their minds, but not far behind were issues with their government, such as immigration and race relations — two things Obama has made worse.

Potentially more serious, however, is the disintegrating U.S. influence across the globe and our severely weakened military, issues considered so serious that congressional Republicans under the leadership of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) have developed a 23-page policy document to address them.

“In the past seven years, our friendships have frayed, our rivalries have intensified. It’s not too much to say that our enemies no longer fear us and too many of our allies no long trust us. And I think this is the direct result of the president’s foreign policy,” Ryan said. “All he did was create … many voids around the world and now our enemies are stepping in to fill those voids. This is what happens when America does not lead.”

With Obama’s tenure ending we are faced with the prospect of Hillary Clinton being elected to what will essentially be Obama’s third term, continuing his disastrous policies, and adding her own signature disasters to the mix.

Among Clinton’s favorite issues are: gun control, climate change and income “inequality.”

She says that 33,000 gun deaths every year is unacceptable. But considered in context, 33,000 deaths among our population of 320 million is roughly one death for every 10,000 people. And not all gun deaths are murders — roughly 8,000 of them are, and Hillary says nothing about gang-related killings in Democrat-controlled urban centers around the nation. Some are killed by police; others by people defending themselves; some are suicides; some are accidents. To Obama and Clinton, the Orlando terrorist attack is a gun control issue.

Obama’s manic compulsion for climate change has produced policies that have destroyed the lives of thousands of energy industry workers, and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars propping up failed green energy companies like Solyndra, based on a theory that is faulty and heavily disputed. Likewise, Clinton wants to install a half-billion solar panels by 2020, seven times what we have today. More bad policies on the horizon.

She favors making incomes “more equal,” not acknowledging that wages are based on economic principles, not fairy tale desires. She wants a $12 an hour minimum wage for everyone, trained or not, good at their job or not.

And we cannot ignore her failure to provide adequate security at the Benghazi consulate when evaluating her foreign policy credentials.

Clinton, like Obama, seeks to control and ignores logic and reasoning when seeking solutions. She shares his “big government as the solution to all problems” philosophy, and that is a recipe for continued trouble.