Obama-GOP Legacy
This graphic, “The Obama Legacy,” is making its way around Facebook. One of my acquaintances posted it this morning. But, to be true, it’s simply not accurate.
A few quick points:
First, the presidency only controls one third of the power system we have in the United States (the Congress and the courts are the other branches of government). So any graphic or commentary placing blame on the economy has to include the party that controls Congress.
So, more accurately, this is really the Obama/Democrat Congress for two years/Republican Congress for five years legacy (or, Obama/Democrat Congress for two years, Senate for seven years/Republican Congress for five years, Senate for nine months legacy, if you will). Because of the political divide in the House and Senate, it might be best to begin describing out system as four branches of government, not three.
Second, at this point, it’s no longer George W. Bush’s fault. The clowns in Washington now own this mess because they haven’t tackled the biggest problem in our economy: The free trade system that has put millions of our families in economic ruin because there’s no low skill, decent wage work.
Yes, it’s that simple.
More than seven million manufacturing jobs since 2000 (another 35 to 50 million jobs connected to those jobs; economists say that there are five to seven jobs created around ever manufacturing job so when the country loses a manufacturing job, as many as five to seven other jobs are also lost). It’s been nearly 20 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA.
The only jobs being created in the economy are service slave jobs and now you’re an ogre if you don’t support the government forcing companies to pay people $15 an hour at those jobs. This doesn’t solve the problem; it just increases everyone’s costs (It also doesn’t address the added cost of government when millions of government workers get automatic pay raises when the minimum wage goes up even though they are making more than the minimum wage now, which is what that fight is truly all about).
No amount of “free” i.e. taxpayer subsidized whatever nor increased military spending and targeted tax breaks for businesses that are already profitable are going to fix this. The only role the federal government can play in rebuilding this economy is its constitutional required function of regulation of tariffs and trade for the benefit of revenues and the country’s workers. Everything else is a Band-Aid on a broken leg.