James Pethokoukis at AEIdeas did the visit, and this graph is the highlight of it.
The red dots on the right axis reveal the Obama tale. It’s an especially humorous, if simultaneously mendacious, one, given that in this auspicious quarter we were supposed to be in the same prosperous state with or without Obama’s promised stimulus benefit. The benefit, after all, only was supposed to ameliorate the pain of the last five years.
Instead, those red dots demonstrate, not just the failure of Obama’s stimulus, but the active damage that “stimulus,” in concert with the rest of Obama’s economic and jobs policies, have done and still are doing to our economy.
In case the dots’ captions are hard to read, here they are, from highest dot to lowest, all for December 2013:
- unemployment rate based on the 2009 Labor Force Participation Rate: 11.8%
- unemployment rate based on CBO’s then forecast for 2013’s LFPR: 10.1%
- unemployment rate based on 2012’s LPFR: 7.9%
- unemployment rate, actual: 6.7%
These compare with Obama’s promised rate of 5%, or roughly full employment.
Can we really afford another five years of these destructive Progressive policies? Or even two more years?