Anyone listening to Republicans would think Armageddon is at hand – but if you look at the facts – America is doing great!
Anyone watching the recent Republican national convention got to listen to “a dark portrait of modern America – police officers being killed in the streets, illegal immigrants crossing the border and murdering US citizens and corrupt politicians enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people.“
Speaker after speaker took to the lectern, delivering tales of deep recession, rampant unemployment, looming economic collapse from an ever-shrinking economy. According to the Republicans, foreign competitors are outpacing us, more people are uninsured than ever before, Obamacare is bankrupting the country, World War III is just around the corner.
Obama and the Democrats seized that message. “America is already great. America is already strong,” Obama declared. “Ronald Reagan called America ‘a shining city on a hill.’ Donald Trump calls it ‘a divided crime scene’ that only he can fix.It doesn’t matter to him that illegal immigration and the crime rate are as low as they’ve been in decades, because he’s not actually offering any real solutions to those issues. He’s just offering slogans, and he’s offering fear.”
However, thanks to our sister site, Mindy Fischer, Writer, we are able to understand the facts – that America is doing great!
Here are seven reason why Republicans are wrong about the current state of affairs in America.
The Uninsured
In February of 2009, right after Obama took office, the uninsured rate was at 16.1%. It was no secret that our health care system was broken. And then came Obamacare. Now, it is true that Obamacare is not perfect….far from it actually. But many of the problems with Obamacare are a direct result of compromises made to appease the Republicans in an effort to make it a bipartisan bill. As we now know, Obamacare is nowhere near the single payer system that Liberals originally wanted. But even with all of the flaws that still need to be addressed, it is definitely better than the broken system that we had before. According to Forbes, for the first time EVER the rate of uninsured Americans is now below 10% (the latest figures released by the CDC put the rate at 9.1%).
The Unemployment Rate
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate was 8.3% in February of 2009. But as you can see in this graph there has been a steady decline under President Obama. Last month the unemployment rate was down to 4.9%.
Beyond the official unemployment rate we have other rates which factor in things like discouraged workers and part time workers. One of those other rates is know as the U6 rate which adds on the workers who are working part-time purely for economic reasons. That figure the righties love to quote of nearly 10% is using the U6 numbers. But here’s the thing…even when you use the U6 figures there has been a vast improvement. In February of ’09 the U6 unemployment rate was 15.1%. It is now at 9.8%.
The Stock Market
Another good indicator of economic growth is the stock market. With the market continuing to hit new highs, it can sometimes be easy to forget just how bad things were when Obama first took office. By the end of Bush’s presidency, we had experienced two stock market crashes and watched the second worst market decline in history, only exceeded by the Great Depression.
February 19th of 2009 the stock market closed at 7,365. But after watching a steady growth of the market under Obama, it is now up over 18,000. On November 11, 2015 the DOW closed at 17,702.
The Annual Deficit
The decline in the budget deficit is another strong indicator of the economic growth under President Obama. In February of 2009 the annual deficit was -$1,400 Billion. But according to the numbers put out by the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit has dropped to -$534 Billion.
GDP Growth
The change in the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is yet another area where we can see the effects of Obama’s Hope and Change. In 2009 the GDP was at around -2.8% and now we are between 1% and 1.1%.
Consumer Confidence
Consumer confidence is another thing that has drastically improved under Obama. In February of 2009 things looked economically bleak for most Americans. The Consumer Confidence Index was at a whopping 25.3. It is now at 118.3.
Combat Troops Deployed
Another big success for President Obama was ending the Iraq War and bringing home so many of our troops. In 2009 we had 186,300 combat troops deployed. But by 2015, between Iraq and Afghanistan that number had fallen all the way to 9,937.
So pretty much all I’m wondering now is how all of that “America is on the brink of Armageddon” campaigning is going for the Clown Party?
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