Rove propagates public misconception about job losses
In his Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove forwarded the falsehood that President Obama's economic policies have not slowed job losses, citing it as one of his "failures." In fact, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show several months of positive job growth, and independent analysts predicted unemployment rates would have been higher without the stimulus.
Rove advances falsehood that Obama has failed to slow job losses
Rove cites poll that shows 57 percent believe Obama's policies failed to "slow the record pace of job losses." From Rove's June 24 column:
On the economy, a mid-June AP poll reported that Mr. Obama has 45% approval, 50% disapproval. That's a dangerous place for any president when jobs are issue No. 1.
The problem is worse in swing areas. Last week's National Public Radio (NPR) poll of the 60 Democratic House seats most at risk this year showed just 37% of voters in these districts agreed Mr. Obama's "economic policies helped avert an even worse crisis and are laying a foundation for our eventual economic recovery"; 57% believed they "have run up a record federal deficit while failing to end the recession or slow the record pace of job losses."
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Mr. Obama's failures mean he can't lift his party by campaigning. A Public Policy Poll earlier this month reported that 48% said an Obama endorsement would make them less likely to vote for the candidate receiving it, while only one-third said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by the president.
BLS data show positive job growth in 2010
BLS data show job losses ended and employers have added jobs each month since January 2010. From a June 4 BLS press release:
Independent analysts agree with White House: Unemployment would be higher, GDP lower without stimulus. In a quarterly report issued April 14, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) estimated that "as of the first quarter of 2010, the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] ARRA has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.2 and 2.8 million. These estimates are similar to those of other analysts, and are broadly consistent with the direct recipient reporting data available for 2009:Q4." From CEA's quarterly report:
In the same report, CEA stated: "The two CEA methods of estimating the impact of the fiscal stimulus suggest that the ARRA has raised the level of GDP as of the first quarter of 2010, relative to what it otherwise would have been, by between 2.5 and 2.9 percent. These estimates are very similar to those of a wide range of other analysts."
Wall Street Journal: 70 percent of economists surveyed said stimulus helped. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 12 that 38 of the 54 economists it surveyed "said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act boosted growth and mitigated job losses, while six said the legislation had a net negative effect."
ABC News: Most on panel of economists "think the economy would be worse" without the stimulus. ABC News reported on February 18 that "most" of the economists on its panel "think the economy would be worse today without the big aid package, which totaled $787 billion and was signed into law by President Obama on Feb. 17, 2009."
NABE: 83 percent say stimulus raised GDP. A February survey of 203 members of the National Association for Business Economics [NABE] found that, "[e]ighty-three percent believe that GDP is currently higher than it would have been without the 2009 stimulus package (ARRA)."
USA Today: Surveyed economists said "stimulus package saved jobs." USA Today reported on January 25:
President Obama's stimulus package saved jobs -- but the government still needs to do more to breathe life into the economy, according to USA TODAY's quarterly survey of 50 economists.
Unemployment would have hit 10.8% -- higher than December's 10% rate -- without Obama's $787 billion stimulus program, according to the economists' median estimate. The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs.
However, from a purely political standpoint...mmfa's contention that the public is misinformed presents real problems for the democrats...regardless of the validity of mmfa's claims about the success of Pres. Obama's actions.
Rove correctly points out that the public's dissatisfaction with Pres.Obama and the democrat party is gathering a head of steam. And that is the point of his article...not whether the stimulus has been effective.
Right or wrong...the democrats are losing the battle of public opinion. Rove also points out what should be more troubling to democrats than a supposed misinformation of the public on stimulus spending:
-- Then there is the intensity gap, which is particularly important in midterms. In Gallup, 45% of Republicans are "very enthusiastic" about voting this fall versus 24% of Democrats. This staggering 22-point gap is the largest so far this election year. And in the NPR survey of 60 swing Democratic districts, 62% of Republicans rated their likelihood of voting as 10, the highest. Only 37% of Democrats were similarly excited. --
Pres. Obama and the democrats have a long way to go and a short time to get there...about four months. If they don't prevent significant in-roads by republicans in congress, Pres. Obama could easily be relegated to lame-duck status for the last 2 years of his term.
Dealing with recessions and bubbles is all about balance.
Yes, you do borrow and spend to get out of recession (in this case, prevent a depression), and then you pay off the debt to prevent the bubble.
Where Keynesian economic has failed is in the failure of government to pay off the debt during good times. We’re so afraid of raising a tax that we use only monetary policy to balance the economy when we should be using fiscal policy and paying off the debt.
The real story is that during good times, Clinton was reducing the deficit and the debt. Bush, by cutting taxes to the wealthy, basically made it much more painful to do what is necessary during a downturn. This is the long term conservative strategy. Get elected by bashing the government, misgovern, then claim government doesn't work.
Obama was given a bad deficit and a bad economy when he was elected. Conservatives encouraged imbalances in the economy and government and are upset that cleaning up the their mess is so difficult.
Thanks for your contributions.
Clinton managed to "win" that game, but of course Al Gore's little "pet project" had something to do with that which the Republicans could not have anticipated. Without a similar techonolgical revolution, Obama will likely not be so lucky.
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IMHO
However, I think a lot of people on both sides of the aisle are expecting another "dip" in the economy which is going to be a problem for the party in power if it becomes a reality. You can't balance a budget if you are continualy stimulating the economy with government funds and Obama desperately wants to get this deficit under control according to him. Something is going to give.
So the party in power always gets the finger wagged at them if things aren't going so well. The Democrats will take a hit this fall, overall, most likely. It happens every midterm, usually.
But I tend to agree with you Bruce, the Republicans have offered nothing of substance and the way they screwed up things royally for years who trusts them? They are all so damn fiscally responsible now but sat on their mouths for years while Bush was in charge. Their silence then, their screaming now, over much of the same, renders them pretty useless.
Did you just coin a new expression? I like it. It fits nicely with the whole "talking out of their a$$es" thing.
And according to Rove, what is the alternative? Going back to Conservative leadership? All Rove and the republicans seem to have to offer us is that they are not Obama. What would they do if back in office? More tax cuts (which Obama has done)? Initiate or continue military operations in the middle east? Weakened and compromised government regulatory systems? A balanced budget (where where they during the W days)?
What kind of leadership can we expect from conservatives that we haven't seen already in the last administration?
Good point...and should the republicans gain control of congress and screw it up again...here comes a third party.
Cutting government spending during a deep recession can cause immediate pain. So far the deficit is more of a long term potential threat. Politically fixing the deficit will be difficult for whoever is in power in this economy.
Yeah... because the media keeps MISINFORMING THEM.
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Duh!
However, I do not see this as a problem for Obama. Usually when the Republicans (or in the case of Reagan - the Democrats) generally fail to make inroads for the next Presidential elections after a mid-term landslide. See 1982 and 1994 for near perfect examples.
I think there is strong precedent that a loss for Democrats at the mid-term will ironically translate into an Obama re-election in 2012.
I don't think many conservatives would agree, but they did not see it coming in 1996 either from what I remember.
Yet, history is not completely on that side of the ledger. If you look at midterms that had a large swing (I'll use 25 seats as the benchmark) the results were mostly the incumbent party losing the White House in the next presidential election.
In the 1950 midterms the dems lost 33 seats and lost the WH in 1952.
In the 1958 midterms the repubs lost 60 seats and lost the WH in 1960.
In the 1966 midterms the dems lost 51 seats and lost the WH in 1968.
In the 1974 midterms the repubs lost 52 seats and lost the WH in 1976.
In the 2006 midterms the repubs lost 36 seats and lost the WH in 2008.
All in all, I think that the democrats will lose at least 25 seats in the coming midterms and Obama will have a tough time getting re-elected...however, I was one of the republicans who swallowed his chew when Clinton was re-elected.
I think Craig makes a very good point also and I would like to add to it, going beyond just second terms in looking for a useful trend in the data, let's look at how long a party had consecutive control of the executive branch in each example listed:
Year, Number of years in control of Presidency by a single party
1950, 18
1958, 6
1966, 6
1974, 6
2006, 6
If Democrats lose in the midterms, it would be unusual for the party in power to lose the executive as well in just 2 years according to wikipedia's data.
I don't expect it, because Bush poured hundreds of billions in (in the form of deficits) and he didn't get jack. Reagan poured hundreds of billions in and he didn't get any more than Clinton, who took hundreds of billions out.
"Of course, one should expect some positive results after throwing hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into the economy. The real question is...is the growth sustainable or just a bandaid?"
Of course, besides being off topic, his portrayal of the events of the past year and the reasonable expectations for the future are totally delusional.
The biggest problem during a recession is that people and businesses which could afford to continue spending exactly what they've been spending stop doing it. THAT'S what causes a recession to be more than a blip on the economic radar!
And so, the ONLY way OUT of a recession that doesn't take YEARS is government spending.
The "growth" will come from those people and businesses which could have been spending all along, but weren't!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once the government spending helps those who were actually directed affected by the economic slowdown, and once consumers and businesses get over their fear of the same thing happening to them, they start spending again.
So, there's no legitimate, reasonable fear that the economy won't recover, and that the government spending was absolutely necessary, and not just a bandaid!
But the weasel wants to pretend that something else is going on! What a dishonest poster he always is.
In the past day or so, I heard another Republican saying that Obama promised that his stimulus bill would create a whole bunch of jobs, but we've actually had job losses since he was elected, and therefore the stimulus didn't work. Of course, that's nonsense - if we WOULD HAVE had greater job losses without the stimulus bill, then it created jobs! Obama never said that ALL job losses would disappear!
Rove and his minions have deceived the American public for years, and so Rove thinks that citing a public opinion poll that demonstrates that a good proportion of the public is deceived proves something? Really?
And of course I had to read this with a mouth full of root beer - of which a good portion now rests on my keyboard.
As to the apparent point of DellDolly's post: Can you perhaps prove just how many jobs have not been lost under Obama's new imaginary statistical category of "jobs not lost (saved) because of Obama's stimulus bill"?
Thank You!
It's INDISPUTABLE that the jobs have been created or saved, and that more will be created and saved before the end of this year, which is what the Obama Administration promised.
You're just an old troll with a new name, and you're not actually interested in participating in ANY kind of reasonable and fair debate on this topic or any other one.
Therefore, please don't anyone feed this troll post by replying and giving him the negative attention he wants. He wants to be treated as though he actually wants to be part of a debate - he doesn't.
Then again, if you really want to count "saved" jobs as legit, don't forget to add a few million to GW's factual employment data over the years. As I recall, GW added (not the left's phoney 'saved' numbers) several million jobs when he had unemployment down to around 4.5%, didn't he?