President Obama is not about to let the American people be fooled by Republican snake oil and economic lies. The President delivered a dose of truth that was designed to protect voters from the GOP’s economic falsehoods.
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The President said:
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Now, you don’t hear a lot about this from the folks who are on the campaign trail. They’re spending all their time talking down America. I don’t know when it became fashionable to do that. But I sure am proud of what I’ve seen Americans do over the course of these last seven years since the crisis hit. And anybody who says we are not absolutely better off today than we were just seven years ago — they’re not leveling with you. They’re not telling the truth. By almost every economic measure, we are significantly better off, and Florida is significantly better off. Jacksonville is a whole lot better off.
And the reason I make this point is none of this was an accident. It happened because of your hard work. It happened because of your resilience. It happened because Americans looked out for one another, and families scrimped and saved, and workers re-trained, and businesses hired and expanded, and students hit the books. And it happened because, early on, my administration put in place some pretty smart policies to rebuild our economy on a new foundation for growth and prosperity.
And thanks to America’s steady, persistent work, those policies are paying off in big, tangible ways — and we’re not talking about it enough. And if we don’t talk about why it is that things got better, then we may end up pursuing policies that will make things worse. It’s not to argue that everything is perfect. There are still folks who are looking for work. There are still problems in terms of people getting higher wages. Being able to save for college, being able to retire. But if we don’t recognize the progress we’ve made and how that came about, then we may chase some snake oil and end up having policies that get us back in the swamp.
Anyone who watched CNN’s Republican debate on Thursday night, and didn’t know the facts about the economy, would have come away thinking that America has to be in the middle of a new Great Recession. The truth is that unemployment has been cut by more than half to 4.9%, 14 million new jobs have been created, the country has had 71 straight months of job growth, which includes 900,000 new manufacturing jobs.
The reason why the Republican presidential candidates don’t talk about the economy in much detail is because doing so would force them to confront the reality that President Obama has done an excellent job in leading the economy rebuild that was necessary after former President George W. Bush nearly took the entire economy down with the same policies that all of the Republican presidential candidates are campaigning on in 2016.
The Republicans are peddling snake oil. Their failed economic policies have carried different labels over the decades from trickle-down economics to job creators, but the main ingredient remained the same. Republicans believe that taking more from everyone else and giving it to the wealthiest Americans is the way to grow the economy. Historical data has proven Republicans wrong at every turn, but here we are in 2016, and the GOP is trying to sell the American people more of the same economic quackery that poisoned the economy eight years ago.
The truth will not only set us free, but it will keep voters from electing another Republican who is determined to destroy the progress that the country has made under President Obama. The antidote for Republican snake oil is the truth as delivered by Obama.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
