THE REASON CRIMINAL CHENEY AND BUSH STILL MATTER

An inherited economy
CHUCK VOLKEMA SR. DELTONA
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Bush
“If you don’t like the message, kill the messenger.” And so it has been with responses to the My Word column, “Dems should’ve run on Obama’s record,” on Sunday by Chris Fox, who proffered a quote from the conservative business publication Forbes: President Obama is the “best economic president in modern times” and his “record outperforms that of every other modern president, including conservative idol Ronald Reagan.”

A reread of the responses to the column reveals a rather cowardly attack on the messenger — Fox — and repetition of a fundamental flaw in the Republicans’ “analysis” of the Obama economy: simply substitute name-calling and invectives for informed argument and hope nobody notices. They want you to forget that nearly every negative number in the current economy has been skewed in that direction by what Obama inherited.

Here are just a few things we should remember about the president’s inherited economy: The last full month of the Bush (No. 43) presidency, our economy dropped some 850,000 jobs. The Bush net jobs gain/loss, for eight years was a loss of 2.5 million. President Obama inherited two unfunded wars, unfunded tax breaks for the wealthy, an unfunded prescription-drug program, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG, a failing banking industry, the near-collapse of the stock market, a housing market so far under water it still hasn’t recovered and the near-death of the auto industry.

The list goes on.


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