Charles Krauthammer’s latest rant against the Obama administration requires a brief response.
The good doctor, syndicated columnist and Fox News Channel contributor, has declared that President Obama’s stimulus left no “trace in the sand.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/02/17/krauthammer_on_stimulus_this_thing_as_predicted_has_not_left_a_trace_in_the_sand.html
I have to disagree with that one, Dr. Krauthammer.
He talks about a “jobless recovery” and says the president will leave no legacy when he departs on Jan. 20, 2017, unlike Ike who left us an interstate highway system or FDR, who built “a Hoover Dam.”
Well, let’s try this on for size.
The Obama team took the field with an economy in free fall. We were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Unemployment was rocketing toward 10 percent. Banks were failing. Automobile dealerships were closing. People were defaulting on mortgages they couldn’t afford. Wall Street was cratering, with billions of dollars in personal wealth flying out the window daily.
How did the new guys respond? They pumped money into the market. They enacted tough new lending requirements, placing some rules on lenders, telling them they couldn’t throw money at borrowers on request. They bailed out the auto industry, saving more than a million jobs.
How has the economy responded? Well, the nation’s debt has increased — and I am the first to acknowledge it must come down.
But …
Joblessness is now at 6.6 percent. Is it because everyone’s found work? No. I’ll concede many folks have quit looking for work. Those horrific monthly job losses have turned into modest gains each month. The nation’s budget deficit has been cut in half. The foreclosure rate on homes has slowed to trickle. The stock market has more than regained all the wealth it lost.
Are we in economic nirvana? Of course not. But to suggest, as Charles Krauthammer does routinely, that the economic stimulus and the policies that accompanied have had no positive impact is simply hold fast to the partisan denial that the other guys can do anything right.
Yes, we still have steep hills to climb before we get out of this mess. We’ve made progress — and that’s worth saluting.