Economists are writing off the sharp 2.9% drop in first-quarter GDP
as a temporary contraction. Maybe. What isn't temporary is President
Obama's massively subpar growth record over the past five years.
When the Commerce Department said two months ago the economy had eked out a 0.1% gain in the first quarter, the White House and various economists said growth would have been higher if not for the bitter winter. When Commerce revised that number down to -1% in May, the same crowd again blamed Jack Frost.
Now that it turns out the economy contracted 2.9% in the first three months of the year — the largest drop since 2009 and the sharpest downward revision in the government's history of making such estimates — everyone says "no biggie." These are, you see, backward-looking numbers; all signs point to growth ahead.
We've heard this "prosperity is just around the corner" promise countless times since President Obama took office, only to see it vanish once the corner is turned. The bigger problem is that Obama has set the country on what appears to be a permanently lower growth track.
Here's the grim reality:
When the Commerce Department said two months ago the economy had eked out a 0.1% gain in the first quarter, the White House and various economists said growth would have been higher if not for the bitter winter. When Commerce revised that number down to -1% in May, the same crowd again blamed Jack Frost.
Now that it turns out the economy contracted 2.9% in the first three months of the year — the largest drop since 2009 and the sharpest downward revision in the government's history of making such estimates — everyone says "no biggie." These are, you see, backward-looking numbers; all signs point to growth ahead.
We've heard this "prosperity is just around the corner" promise countless times since President Obama took office, only to see it vanish once the corner is turned. The bigger problem is that Obama has set the country on what appears to be a permanently lower growth track.
Here's the grim reality:
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