Polling News: Obama Sinks, Perry Rises And California Sides With Republicans On Economy

Quite a bit of polling news today starting with a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, via MSNBC, which shows Barack Obama is at the lowest point of his presidency where he has dropped 3 points since July on his overall approval rating putting it at 44 percent, his handling of the economy earns him only a 37 percent approval and 19 percent believe the country is on the right track.

Perhaps most ominously for Obama, a majority of poll takers — 54 percent — think he's facing a longer-term setback from which he's unlikely to recover. Back in January, just 39 percent agreed with that assessment.

Full poll results found here.(PDF)

That poll is followed up with a a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, to which Wapo headlines their article about it with "Obama ratings sink to new lows as hope fades."

More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy and, what has become issue No. 1, the stagnant jobs situation. Just 43 percent now approve of the job he is doing overall, a new career low; 53 percent disapprove, a new high.

Another poll shows that Obama's economic messaging is not resonating well in the very blue state of California which is suffering from 12 percent unemployment and while the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll which finds that "many would rather adhere to party orthodoxy than compromise to address the current economic problems," yet the plurality of respondents, 49 percent, agree with Republicans that slashing government spending to restrain the deficit will better lead to prosperity instead of Obama/Democrat's message for strategic government investments to stimulate the economy where only 37 percent side with them.

"The argument of 'We need to cut the size of government, we need to reduce the deficit' has won, even in California," said David Kanevsky, research director for American Viewpoint, a Republican firm that co-directed the bipartisan poll. "Stimulus is almost a four-letter word here."

With California unemployment mired at 12%, the electorate is clearly dissatisfied with the status quo. Nearly 3 in 4 voters say the country is on the wrong track, up sharply from the 55% who felt that way in November 2009.

Perhaps that is why Democrats have dropped the word "stimulus" almost entirely from their vocabulary as The Hill reports.

Democrats are now being careful to frame their job-creation agenda in language excluding references to any stimulus, even though their favored policies for ending the deepest recession since the Great Depression are largely the same.

Obama's much talked about upcoming jobs speech will undoubtedly also exclude the word "stimulus" and instead people will hear the word "investment" to mean more spending and stimulus.

Gallup finds that since Obama's signature legislation dubbed Obamacare was passed, the number of uninsured people has increased, not decreased.

CNN reports on a different set of polls showing that Rick Perry has widened his lead in the GOP field of candidates for the presidential election of 2012.

The Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll has Perry atop the field with 36 percent, followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 17 percent and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Rep. Ron Paul tied at 10 percent.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll delivered similar results. Perry is 38 percent of respondent's first choice for the nomination, followed by Romney at 23 percent, Paul at 9 percent and Bachmann at 8 percent.

Last but not least, Rasmussen just released their Generic Presidential Ballot which shows that a generic Republican candidate gets 49 percent support while Obama only receives 41 percent.

Attaching the name of the GOP front runner, Rick Perry, to that question, Perry leads Obama with 44 percent to Obama's 41 percent.

The polling news today is quite ominous for Obama's reelection chances in 2012 and while polls are a wonderful way to track patterns and trends, they are still just a snapshot into the minds of Americans at any given time.

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Polls: Majority Disapproves Of Obama's Handling Of Economy

CNN:

But only 34 percent approve of how the president is handling economic issues, with 65 percent saying they disapprove of how he’s handling the economy. Thirty-three percent give him a thumbs up on the budget deficit and 37 percent approving of how he's dealing with unemployment.



"Two-thirds of Democrats continue to approve of Obama's economic record, but seven out of ten independents disapprove. Not surprisingly, more than nine out of ten Republicans also disapprove of how Obama is handling the economy....

CNN isn't the only polling releasing all new lows for Obama, as Quinnipiac University headlines with "September 1, 2011 - Obama Approval Hits All-Time Low, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Economy Is Getting Worse, More Voters Say ."



In fact, looking at the national average, using a variety of polls by multiple organizations has disapproval of Obama's job performance as a whole at 53 percent with approval at 42 percent.



Is it any wonder that one GOP candidate, Rick Perry, has just gained a lead over Obama in the latest Rasmussen poll?



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Rick Perry Favored By Republicans And Tea Party Supporters

Gallup's new numbers are out and Rick Perry seems to at the front of the pack still, among Republicans who identify "government spending and power" as the set of issues most important to them as well as a smaller lead against Romney among Republicans who say "business and the economy" is their top issue.



Findings also show that Perry is more popular among Tea Party supporters than any other candidate as well.

Rick Perry's candidacy has attracted strong initial support from Republicans who identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement. Perry leads by 21 percentage points over the closest contenders among this group, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. Among Republicans who say they do not support the Tea Party movement, Romney and Perry are essentially tied.



These results are based on an Aug. 17-21 Gallup poll, which showed Perry overtaking Romney as the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination among all Republicans nationwide.



The poll finds that 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement, with 36% saying they do not consider themselves supporters. Included among the group of Tea Party supporters is a smaller group -- representing 12% of Republicans -- who say they are "strong" supporters of the movement. Among this smaller group, Perry's lead is even greater, 46% to 16%, over Bachmann, with all other candidates in single digits.



In Gallup's July measurement of Republicans' nomination preferences, before Perry officially entered the race, Romney held a slight edge over Bachmann among Tea Party supporters, 29% to 23%. Romney led Paul by 25% to 16% among nonsupporters.

The breakdown is explained over at Gallup on the lead Perry holds over Romney on the Government spending and business and economy issues, but there is no doubt that 3 weeks into his official campaign, Perry has slid into the candidate of choice for many.



NRO explains why Perry is popular with those that recognize his name already and why he will become more popular as more match him up against Romney and others.

• As “America’s jobs governor,” Perry is a one-man antidote to Obama’s venomous policies, which have held unemployment above 9 percent for 25 of the last 27 months. Across all 50 states, between June 2009 and June 2011, the Dallas Federal Reserve calculates that 49.9 percent of America’s net new jobs arose in Texas. July was its eleventh straight month of payroll expansion, with 29,300 Texans finding work. Nearly eleven years into Perry’s governorship, Texas inarguably is No. 1 in job growth.

During Romney’s single four-year term, however, the U.S. Labor Department ranked Massachusetts No. 47 in job growth. Employment increased just 0.9 percent between January 2003 and January 2007. At that time, U.S. job growth was roughly 5 percent, reports WSJ.com’s Brett Arends. Romney did keep Massachusetts ahead of Ohio and Michigan — two Rust Belt job sieves — and Louisiana, crushed by Katrina.

Read the whole thing.



Job growth and the economy are going to be two of the most important issues for the 2012 GOP nomination and for the 2012 presidential election and Perry stands far above all other GOP candidates as well as above Barack Obama on records alone.



Unless unemployment is drastically reduced and/or the economy grows at an impossible rate over the next year, Obama has nothing to campaign on except his speeches which are nothing like those he charmed voters with in 2008, because now there is a record behind him and it is ugly.



Obama's signature issue, Obamacare is still opposed by the majority of Americans and his unprecedented spending spending spree and deficit increases in the last two and half years have failed to stimulate the economy or produce the job growth promised with unemployment still over 9.0 percent.



No doubt as more Americans, especially Independents, learn more and are able to compare Perry's record with everyone else in the field of candidates and Obama, Perry's national lead will increase.



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Home Depot Co-Founder Explains The Damage Of Obama's Economic Policies To Job Creation

"Even brain-dead economists understand that when you raise taxes, you cost jobs."---Bernie Marcus, Co-founder of Home Depot

Today we see another name on the list of businessmen who are explaining the damage Barack Obama's policies of regulations, tax increases and out-of-control spending, is doing to America's economy, unemployment and growth.

Bernie Marcus co-founder of Home Depot, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs, tells Investors Business Daily that the single biggest impediment to job growth today is the U.S. Government.

Marcus: The U.S. government. Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.

If you're a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.

IBD: President Obama has promised to streamline and eliminate regulations. What's your take?

Marcus: His speeches are wonderful. His output is absolutely, incredibly bad. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones. With just ObamaCare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that's probably going end up being 150,000 pages of regulations.

IBD: Washington has been consumed with debt talks. Is this the right focus now?

Marcus: They are all tied together. If we don't lower spending and if we don't deal with paying down the debt, we are going to have to raise taxes. Even brain-dead economists understand that when you raise taxes, you cost jobs.

Recently it was reported that Democratic Steve Wynn, CEO of casino company Wynn Resorts, stated that Barack Obama's administration "is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation" in his lifetime.

And I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.

You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Before that I published a long comment from a small business owner, A.J. Motes, who explained how Obama and Democrats had blurred the lines between the "rich" and small business owners and how the Democrat's tax increase proposals would cause the lifeblood of our economy, the small businesses, to suffer.

So when politicians are talking about raising taxes on the filthy rich, they want us to think that those nasty old bankers, corporate swells, and union thugs are finally going to get what's coming to them. Unfortunately, these protected groups will be largely immune to the tax and regulatory burden. The real losers will be the small business owners, ordinary folk like you and me who have no means of protecting ourselves against the power of the government.

Don't be fooled by political rhetoric that claims taxes will be extracted from the super rich. It's the small business owner, already suffering in a poor economy, who will be hurt the most.

I wouldn't mind taxes if everyone followed the same rules and if government weren't spending our money on stuff taxpayers don't want. And I really don't like feeling that I have been turned into a slave who works to support the half of America that lives off government subsidies and handouts. Cut government spending first!

These are job creators, employers, the very backbone of our economy and they are explaining quite clearly what Barack Obama's policies have done and are continuing to do to our country.

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Video- RNC Ad, 'Change Direction' Attacks Obama On Spending And Taxes

The Republican National Committee has produced an ad called "Change Direction" which challenges Obama's economic decisions and record over the last two-and-a-half years.

Video below:




Transcript:

"He promised to change direction, $800 billion in stimulus, trillions got government healthcare, 2 million jobs gone, left turn after left turn America's heading the wrong way fast. Six million foreclosures, fourteen trillion in debt, $500 billion in higher taxes and the worst long term unemployment in generations. Don't let Obama drive us to disaster, change directions. "

The ad campaign will run for four weeks on national cable channels.

This comes amidst news that Obama's stimulus not only failed but could have made matters worse. Click all the links over at Hot Air and James Pethokoukis to see how much of a mess Obama's policies have truly created.

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By The Numbers: Obama's False Tax Narrative

Barack Obama and liberals across the board continue to harp on raising taxes aka revenue as they battle against meaningful spending cuts, but the numbers, the data prove that narrative to be false.

Wall Street Journal's Review and Outlook explains:

But what about the liberal claim, repeated constantly, that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 caused today's deficits? CBO has shown this to be demonstrably false. On May 12, the budget arm of Congress examined the changes in its baseline projections from 2001 through 2011. In 2001, it had predicted a surplus in 2011 of $889 billion. Instead, it expects a deficit of $1.4 trillion.

What explains that $2.29 trillion budget reversal? Well, the direct revenue loss from the combination of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts contributed roughly $216 billion, or only about 9.5% of the $2.29 trillion. And keep in mind that even this low figure is based on a static revenue model that assumes almost no gains from faster economic growth.

After the Bush investment tax cuts of 2003, tax revenues were $786 billion higher in 2007 ($2.568 trillion) than they were in 2003 ($1.782 trillion), the biggest four-year increase in U.S. history. So as flawed as it is, the current tax code with a top personal income tax rate of 35% is clearly capable of generating big revenue gains.

CBO's data show that by far the biggest change in its deficit forecast is the spending bonanza, with outlays in 2011 that are $1.135 trillion higher than the budget office estimated a decade ago. One-third of that is higher interest payments on the national debt, notwithstanding record low interest rates. But $523 billion is due to domestic spending increases, including defense, education, Medicaid and the Obama stimulus. Mr. Bush's Medicare drug plan accounts for $53 billion of this unanticipated spending in 2011.

The other big revenue reductions come from the "temporary" tax changes of the Obama stimulus and 2010 bipartisan tax deal. CBO says the December tax deal—which includes the one-year payroll tax cut and the annual fix on the alternative minimum tax—will reduce revenues by $196 billion this year. The temporary speedup in business expensing will cost another $55 billion.

The payroll tax cut was sold in the name of stimulating growth and hiring, yet the economy has grown more slowly this year than in last year's fourth quarter. As we've long argued, the "temporary, targeted and timely" tax cuts favored by Keynesians and the White House don't do much for growth because they don't permanently change incentives to save and invest. Mr. Obama was hawking more of those yesterday, even as he wants to raise taxes overall.

Bloomberg points out that that in yesterday's speech, the same speech that MSNBC senior political analyst Mark Halperin is catching flack for calling Barack Obama a "dick" for, Obama mentioned corporate jet benefits and ending tax breaks for corporate jet owners, six times, yet as the article informs it's readers, that would account for "less than one-tenth of 1 percent of his target for reducing the federal deficit."

Obama's purpose in specifying that one item is to feed into a class warfare mindset, an "everyone should hate the rich because we are not rich too" type of thought.

Heritage seems to find it ironic that the very benefits Obama was criticizing in his speech, were "created by his own stimulus package."

But the corporate jet tax break to which Obama was referring – called “accelerated depreciation,” and a popular Democratic foil of late – was created by his own stimulus package.

Proponents of the tax break lauded it as a means to spur economic activity by encouraging purchases of large manufactured goods (planes). So the president’s statement today – and his call to repeal that tax break generally – is either a tacit admission that the stimulus included projects that did not, in fact, stimulate the economy, or an attempt to “soak the rich” without regard for the policy’s effects on the economy.

Redistribution of wealth is Obama's meme again,, where those that earn more money than others should be soaked for more than 35 percent of their income to provide for those who make less, is popular among liberals and Barack Obama, but even if the government stole 100% of the so-called rich's money, our debt would still not be paid off.

Obama is desperate for a platform for his 2012 reelection campaign since his actual record is weak because his policies have failed to stimulate the economy, failed to bring unemployment down but has seen it rise during his term, failed to cut government spending, and has instead created more debt and more spending.

Obama has simply failed across the board so he cannot run on his "success" because he has none economically and polling shows the public knows it and severely disapproves of his whole handling of the economy and deficit problem as I noted and linked to various polls from multiple organizations in the "by the numbers" portion of yesterdays post showing Obama is losing yet another portion of a demographic, pro-Israel Jewish Democrats, approval.

His swan song is old and I seriously doubt the majority of the American public, aside from his most liberal base, is going to join him in singing the chorus this time around.

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Obama Still Hitting New Polling 'Lows' On Economy

According to the latest McClatchy-Marist poll, despite 50 percent of voters having a favorable impression of Obama with 44 percent having an unfavorable impression, and a majority believing Obama inherited the problems, 58 percent of voters disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy with only 37 percent of voters approving.

So, voters like Obama personally, they understand he inherited the problem but they are unhappy with how he has handled the problem.

Breakdown:

Independents- 60 percent disapprove of Obama on economy
Republicans- 91 percent disapprove of Obama on economy
Democrats- 31 percent of Democrats disapprove of Obama on economy

Other findings show that more disapprove of the job Obama is doing (47%) than approve (45%) and 61 percent of the voters disapprove of how Obama is handling the budget deficit.


Related: Dems Have No Plan For Jobs, Concerns of Middle-Class Families

Much of this discontent stems from Washington Democrats’ reliance on failed ‘stimulus’ policies over responsible, long-term solutions to address the key cost-of-living issues facing families and small businesses:

	Democrats who run Washington	Republicans
High gas prices	No plan.	Republicans’ American Energy Initiative is focused on stopping government policies that drive up energy prices and removing barriers to job-creating energy production.
Skyrocketing health care costs	No plan.	Republicans have voted to repeal the job-crushing health care law, and are working to replace it with common-sense reforms to lower costs and protect jobs.
Cost of creating jobs	No plan.	Republicans’ Plan for America’s Job Creators builds on the Pledge to America with measures designed to get government out of the way so our economy can get back to creating jobs.
Cost of government	No plan.	Republicans’ Path to Prosperity budget pays down our debt over time and lays the foundation for long-term private-sector job growth.

Source Speaker.gov.

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"Unchartered Depths": Obama Policies Provide The 'Worst Recovery' In A Lifetime

WSJ shows that the Joint Economic Committee has chronicled how weak Obama's recovery has been compared to others since World War II. Here is how Obama's recovery compares to previous post 1960 recoveries: (From report called "Unchartered Depths")

Click image to enlarge

In a report entitled "Unchartered Depths," the Committee finds that "employment is now 5.0% below what it was at the start of the recession, 38 months ago. This compares to an average rise in employment of 3.7% over the same period in prior post-WWII recessions."

On economic growth, real GDP has risen 0.8% over the 13 quarters since the recession began, compared to an average increase of 9.9% in past recoveries. From the beginning of the recession to April 2011, real personal income has grown just .9% compared to 9.4% for the same period in previous post 1960 recessions.

The standard response from Obama apologists is that recession of 2008 and 2009 was different because, as former Clinton administration economist Robert Shapiro puts it, "this was a financial crisis, and these take longer to recover from." In fact, in most cases, the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery to make up for lost ground.

That was what Ronald Reagan's critics said when the U.S. economy soared during 1983 and 1984 with quarterly growth numbers exceeding 7%. At the time, liberal Keynesians yawned and declared the good times nothing more than a normal snapback from the deep recession.

So where is the normal snapback now? Even $4 trillion in deficits since 2009 and nearly $2 trillion of asset purchases by the Fed haven't pulled the economy from its funk.

No one denies Obama inherited a bad economic situation, as have other presidents in the past. Comparing the the results from Obama's actions with the actions and results of previous administrations faced with inherited economic difficulties tells a story of a failed recovery.

Here are a few of the differences between what Reagan successfully did to spur recovery compared to what Obama has done:

Like President Reagan, President Obama inherited an economy in crisis. But Obama came into office vowing to implement policy ideas that were exactly opposite the ideas that inspired the successful Reagan Presidency.

* Reagan cut income tax rates. Obama spent his first two years promising to increase tax rates on “the rich,” mostly small business owners and investors. In December he signed legislation that schedules his tax increase to take effect two months after the 2012 Presidential election

* Reagan cut “discretionary” spending. Obama dramatically increased it.

* Reagan reduced regulation and government intervention in the private sector.

* Obama has implemented waves of new regulation and under his leadership Congress passed legislation that will require new regulations of health insurance and virtually every detail of banking and finance – even ATM cards.

He and Democrats spent when they should have cut. Obama and Democrats fought change when they should have ushered it in. Obama and Democrats focused on Obamacare, against the opposition of the majority of Americans, when they should have focused on job creation. Obama and Democrats spent trillions in monies we did not have, so they borrowed more to spend more. Obama and Democrats have declared all out war on businesses, which are a huge source of job creation and could give the economy the boost it needs to recover.

Every economic decision Barack Obama has made has pulled the so-called recovery farther back instead of pushing it forward.

It is Obama's failed policies that has made this the worst recovery of a lifetime, pure and simple.

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Complete Economic Incompetence

Two pieces I am going to show teasers from then point you to the entire articles. Both of which show an alarming amount of incompetence and a complete unseriousness (yes I made that word up!! deal with it) on the part of our government to address the unemployment situation and to help businesses to expand, compete, and help the economy as well as hire more people.

The Politico:

Nearly nine months after its formation, a $30 billion government fund to foster small-business lending has yet to pay out a single dime, even as the nation struggles with traumatic levels of unemployment.

844 institutions have applied for $11.6 billion from the Small Business Lending Fund, yet not one dime has been issued from a fund meant to help the economy, small businesses and unemployment?

Second article I will point you to is at NYT:

The Federal Reserve hoped that its three-year-old economic rescue campaign would reach a climax at the end of June. It hoped that consumers and businesses by now would be spending more and more, and the central bank could start doing less and less.

Lotta hoping going on there huh?

That peak now looks like a long plateau. The Fed still is expected to announce Wednesday that it will halt the expansion of its aid programs at the end of June, as scheduled, when it completes the purchase of $600 billion in Treasury securities. But growth is sputtering, and economists now expect that the Fed will leave its $2 trillion of bandages, props and crutches untouched until next year.

The pace of economic expansion has repeatedly fallen short of the Fed’s predictions, and the central bank is expected to lower its eyes once again when its releases a new forecast after a two-day meeting of its policy board, the Federal Open Market Committee.

This is the type of thing you get when you hire someone that has no experience for the job he was hired to do.

Add this to the latest CBO report and is it any wonder 66 percent of Americans think we are on the wrong track, pluralities saying they definitely will not vote for Obama again and saying they are worse off now than they were when Obama took office?

Add it all together and what you get is one word--- Incompetence.

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Brutal Poll Numbers For 'One Term' Obama

"I will be held accountable. .I've got four years and.... A year from now, I think people are going to see that we're starting to make some progress, but there's still going to be some pain out there.... If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."---- Barack Obama February 2009 (Video here)

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted June 17-20 shows worrisome results for Barack Obama and his chances of reelection in 2012, with a 44 to 34 margin saying they are worse off now than they were when Obama took office, less than 25 percent saying they see any signs of improvement and two-thirds of the country saying they believe the country is on the wrong track.

The portion of Americans who say they believe the U.S. is on the wrong track is higher than it was at any point during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent after the 1981-82 recession, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. The ABC poll showed the wrong-track number during Reagan’s first term peaking at 57 percent in October 1982. The Bloomberg poll shows 66 percent of Americans think the U.S. is going in the wrong direction now.

Other results from the poll show that 36 percent of respondents say they definitely will not vote for Obama in 2012 with 30 percent saying they will. More concerning for Obama though is the spread when likely Independent voters are questioned.

Among likely independent voters, only 23 percent said they will back his re-election, while 36 percent said they definitely will look for another candidate.

Believe it or not, the figures above are not even the worse news for Obama.

The bad news is the results when respondents are asked about Obama's job performance on the economy.

Obama’s performance ratings drop significantly when the focus turns to his management of the economy, jobs and deficits. By a margin of 61 percent to 32 percent, Americans disapprove of the job Obama is doing to tackle the budget deficit. Fifty-seven percent of respondents disapproved of his efforts to create jobs and overall 57 percent disapproved of his handling of the economy.

There is a silver lining here for Obama because by a margin of 61 percent to 37 percent Americans say they believe that Obama will have had his chance to make the economy “substantially better” by the end of 2012.

Emphasis mine because while that is good news for Obama is it also bad news for Obama because nothing he has done has impacted the economy and while respondents believe he will have had his "chance" to make a difference, Obama has shown no desire to change the way he is handling the economy and the 2012 election is a little under a year and a half away.

Barack Obama has already blown that chance.


[Update] Top of the Ticket has a must read and reminds readers of Reagan's closing lines in Cleveland during the last debate of the 1980 campaign against President Jimmy Carter.

Reagan said:

Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?

Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?

And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.

Those questions are as relevant today and they were then.

Kudos to Andrew Malcolm for reminding us of them.

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Data Shows Obama Did Not Prevent Second Great Depression Despite Claims To The Contrary

Investors Business Daily reports that "the White House and its supporters seem to be engaging in a bit of historical revisionism."

White House economists forecast in January 2009 that, even without a stimulus, unemployment would top out at just 8.8% — well below the 10.8% peak during the 1981-82 recession, and nowhere near Depression-era unemployment levels.

The same month, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that, absent any stimulus, the recession would end in "the second half of 2009." The recession officially ended in June 2009, suggesting that the stimulus did not have anything to do with it.

They call it historical revisionism, I call it just another one of Obama's lies.

Another Obama meme bites the dust....

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International Monetary Fund Downgrades U.S. Forecast

Via Washington Examiner we see the International Monetary Fund has downgraded their 2011 and 2012 growth forecasts for the U.S.

The IMF now forecasts U.S. gross domestic product of 2.5 percent in 2011 and 2.7 percent in 2012, yet Obama's budget proposal anticipated growth of 2.7 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively. While that may not seem like a big deal, small fluctuations in GDP can make a huge difference on deficits because economic performance has an effect on both sides of the budget ledger. Greater growth means more revenue because more people are employed and earning higher incomes, but it also means less spending on so-called "automatic stabilizers" such as unemployment benefits.

Obama's growth compared to Reagan's:

Reagan recovery saw GDP surge by 4.5 percent and 7.2 percent in 1983 and 1984,and the Obama economy isn't going to achieve that in anybody's wildest dreams.

Here are a few differences between Obama's policies and Reagan's:

* Reagan cut income tax rates. Obama spent his first two years promising to increase tax rates on “the rich,” mostly small business owners and investors. In December he signed legislation that schedules his tax increase to take effect two months after the 2012 Presidential election

* Reagan cut “discretionary” spending. Obama dramatically increased it.

* Reagan reduced regulation and government intervention in the private sector.

* Obama has implemented waves of new regulation and under his leadership Congress passed legislation that will require new regulations of health insurance and virtually every detail of banking and finance – even ATM cards.

BTW, it has been a year since Obama's much lauded "Recovery Summer" as Speaker of the House John Boehner explains:

The “stimulus” was all about big spending and big government — not jobs. That was obvious on the day the “Recovery Summer” began in my home state of Ohio. Local construction workers on a nearby site in Columbus were forced to take the day off, without pay, so the White House entourage could roll through and tout all the taxpayer dollars they were spending. But all that spending got us was more debt and fewer jobs.

Approximately 1.5 million jobs have been lost since the “stimulus” was signed in 2009 — roughly 300,000 of them as administration officials hopped from town to town promoting the “summer of recovery.” The national unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in May — far above the 8 percent promised by the White House — and has averaged 9.5 percent throughout the Obama presidency.

The president can call this a “bump in the road,” or blame ATMs, or joke that those “shovel ready” jobs that were promised “weren’t as shovel ready as we expected.” But there’s nothing funny about policies that keep workers on the unemployment line and drive us deeper into debt. Those aren’t the kinds of results — and this isn’t the recovery — the American people deserve.

There has been no recovery. Obama and the Democrats who controlled the House and Senate at the time, poured almost a trillion dollars into the economy and slowed down the bad news, but using an analogy I have used before, that was nothing more than putting a band-aid on a gushing wound and claiming the wound was healing just because less blood visibly flowed.

Slamming money into the economy will not fix the underlying problem. If the root cause is not addressed then it does no more than throw good money after bad to watch it get sucked up before everything starts collapsing again.

In the meantime, all that money thrown at the problem adds to our debt/deficit.

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Mitt Romney Ad: 'Bump In The Road'

Hard hitting Mitt Romney ad taking a hit at Barack Obama on the economy.



We are Americans, not bumps in the road.

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Obama Administrations Incompetence At A Glance

Economic Policies for the 21st Century provides another graph of what the Obama administration claimed the $787 billion plus stimulus package would do to prevent unemployment from reaching 8 percent in order to get public support for the passage. (It is now at 9.1 percent)

Three different graphs below will show, in a glance, how Obama's policies not only failed, but led to a decrease of jobs, compared miserably to Reagan's policies when he was handed a horrible economy and tripled our deficit.

Click image to enlarge



(H/T Gateway Pundit for deficit graph)

In the first graph above: The dark blue line on the bottom is what they claimed would be unemployment with the stimulus package that Obama and Democrats who controlled the House and Senate passed.

The light blue line is what they claimed unemployment would be without passage of the stimulus package.

The red line is what actually happened after Barack Obama signed the stimulus bill.

E21 explains:

In May 2011, using the latest figures available from the BLS, the unemployment rate reached 9.1%. In contrast, the Romer and Bernstein projections estimated that the unemployment rate would be around 8.1% for this month without a recovery plan, or 6.8% with a stimulus plan (which was ultimately passed). The actual unemployment rate has been consistently below Romer and Bernstein’s worse case scenario for the economy – and by a considerable margin. They projected that the unemployment rate would never climb above 9%. As time has passed, it turns out that only two months out of the last two years have seen an unemployment rate lower than 9%.

And the unemployment trajectory appears to be getting worse, not better. The last two months have seen unemployment grow; again, against projections that unemployment would decline every single month after August 2009 with a stimulus in place.

The second graph above from Liberty Works shows the comparison between Obama's policies and Reagan's and which policies produced results and which has failed miserably.

Like President Reagan, President Obama inherited an economy in crisis. But Obama came into office vowing to implement policy ideas that were exactly opposite the ideas that inspired the successful Reagan Presidency.

* Reagan cut income tax rates. Obama spent his first two years promising to increase tax rates on “the rich,” mostly small business owners and investors. In December he signed legislation that schedules his tax increase to take effect two months after the 2012 Presidential election

* Reagan cut “discretionary” spending. Obama dramatically increased it.

* Reagan reduced regulation and government intervention in the private sector.

* Obama has implemented waves of new regulation and under his leadership Congress passed legislation that will require new regulations of health insurance and virtually every detail of banking and finance – even ATM cards.

The result of ObamaNomics has been a slow, halting economic recovery compared to the extended economic boom that followed the recession of the 1980s.

The third graph shown above shows what Obama's failed and dangerous policies have done to America's deficit problem, he tripled it.

The Obama presidency has failed from one end of the spectrum to the other and instead of changing course and reducing spending, creating jobs, reducing regulations so businesses can grow and employ more people, and following Reagan's example on the economy, Obama keeps trudging along, lying, misleading and fighting against any policies that will help dig us out of the Obama hole we are in.

The only thing the American voters can do now is ask themselves, did Obama make it better or make it worse and vote accordingly in 2012.

[Update] Must-read: The Economy Is Worse Than You Think

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Generic Presidential Ballot Has Republicans Ahead Of Obama

Rasmussen hands Barack Obama more bad news in a week which economic news has already been devastating for him.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that in a hypothetical 2012 presidential matchup, a generic Republican candidate earns support from 45% of Likely U.S. Voters, while the president attracts 43% of the vote. Three percent (3%) favor some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

On average, 57.3 percent of the American public believes the country is on the wrong track. Home prices continue to drop by over 4 percent in the first quarter of 2011, unemployment is at 9 percent and Friday's report is not projected to be good. Added to that, the so-called recovery is faltering.

It never was a recovery. The massive stimulus package that Obama and the Democratically controlled House and Senate passed, simply put a band-aid on a gushing wound, postponed the inevitable and ended up costing more and worsening the job situation.

Quick analogy- Take a lot of money and pump it into a failing business without changing the way the company does business will do no more than help that business keep the doors open until they run out of the money that was pumped into it.

If you do not address the root cause of a failure, no amount of money is going to stop it from failing over and over again.

When businesses and/or corporations grow and expand they hire more people. Basic Job Growth 101.

The stark contrast coming into the 2012 election is clear.

Liberal Democrats , including Obama believe pumping more money into the economy aka "invest" will help it recover. Republicans believe spending less by cutting government spending and working on helping businesses grow will help the economy and encourage massive job growth.

You don't bite the hand that feeds you and Obama and liberals, like rabid dogs, continue to attack the very people that can help the economy recover, by threatening them with higher taxes or creating regulation after regulation to prevent them from growing.

Conservatives and liberals are walking, no running, in opposite directions, widening the gap between the two and by November 2012 the choice before the American people is going to be very very clear.

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How Much Economic Trouble Is the U. S. In?

Everyone knows that the United States government spends far more than it takes in. Indeed, it has been doing that for all but a few years since 1930. Since it has been doing that pretty much all along, why get all that bothered about it at this late date? It would appear that the furor is being caused by the mounting size of this deficit spending in recent years under both political parties. At some point we might reach a point where the government is in so far in over its financial head that it is bankrupt in all but name but there is no bankrupcy court to appeal to. The question is then: are we there yet?

Believe it or not, the answer to that question is neatly compiled in one table provided by that very same government via the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Commerce Department. That table, number 2.6, is entitled Personal Income and its Disposition, Monthly. That one table gives you all the figures you need to assess where the government is at financially in relation to the people of this country. We have pulled out the critical parts of the data in table 2.6 into the table below. Please do not be deterred by the size of this table and all those numbers. Anyone with an eighth grade education can easily understand what this table tells us and how important it is that everyone understand the implications of what it shows.

The critical part you need to digest is provided by the last two columns in the table. The column marked PRIV CAP shows how much money is made by private individuals in this country divided by our population to provide the per capita private earnings. When this figure increases, the average American is better off and when it decreases, we are worse off. The last column shows the the net financial effect that the government has on us because it is the total money coming in from private individuals and going out to them divided by our population. When the figure is negative, every man, woman and child is providing the government the figure shown each year to run the government. Obviously it should never be a positive figure because that would mean we are not providing any money to run the government but rather instead it is borrowing money to send money to us on top of the expense of running the government. Except for those last two columns, the other columns with money figures are in billions of dollars.

YEAR	MON	PERS INC	TRANS	CONTR	TAXES	PRIVATE	GOVT	PRIV CAP	GOVT CAP
2005	03	10,365.9	1,503.21	869.62	1,181.77	9,732.3	-548.18	32,947.6	-1,855.79
2005	06	10,509.8	1,516.11	873.61	1,209.95	9,867.3	-567.45	33,328.6	-1,916.66
2005	09	10,490.3	1,506.95	869.64	1,217.00	9,852.9	-579.69	33,192.9	-1,952.87
2005	12	10,660.2	1,510.10	875.62	1,248.31	10,025.7	-613.83	33,695.4	-2,063.02
2006	03	10,878.3	1,546.08	901.62	1,306.47	10,233.8	-662.01	34,322.1	-2,220.24
2006	06	10,954.9	1,570.41	861.69	1,306.84	10,276.1	-628.12	34,383.7	-2,101.67
2006	09	11,021.9	1,572.42	893.46	1,320.06	10,342.9	-641.10	34,511.5	-2,139.17
2006	12	11,187.5	1,596.22	907.33	1,366.01	10,498.6	-677.12	34,942.1	-2,253.63
2007	03	11,251.0	1,628.63	912.33	1405.68	10,534.7	-689.38	34,982.9	-2,289.24
2007	06	11,263.8	1,612.61	907.13	1,411.90	10,558.3	-706.42	34,976.2	-2,340.13
2007	09	11,331.5	1,634.35	907.22	1,417.51	10,604.4	-690.38	35,035.4	-2,280.91
2007	12	11,392.1	1,650.32	911.48	1,425.68	10,653.3	-686.84	35,113.3	-2,263.83
2008	03	11,401.1	1,668.54	915.28	1,424.71	10,647.8	-671.45	35,024.3	-2,208.62
2008	06	11,404.9	1,806.52	899.98	1,221.43	10,498.4	-314.89	34,457.3	-1,033.52
2008	09	11,293.3	1,716.60	897.11	1,343.54	10,473.8	-524.05	34,292.0	-1,715.77
2008	12	11,354.0	1,797.74	901.17	1,311.79	10,457.8	-415.52	34,163.9	-1,357.43
2009	01	11,247.1	1,846.59	896.42	1,254.20	10,297.0	-204.03	33,616.7	-666.10
2009	02	11,136.1	1,861.25	887.82	1,121.66	10,162.7	-148.23	33,157.6	-483.62
2009	03	11,119.8	1,898.35	886.91	1,085.82	10,108.3	-74.38	32,959.7	-242.52
2009	04	11,160.2	1,917.88	892.77	1,033.30	10,135.1	-8.19	33,025.6	-26.68
2009	05	11,330.2	2,075.84	896.05	1,022.13	10,150.4	157.66	33,053.0	513.39
2009	06	11,156.2	1,962.14	889.91	1,011.73	10,083.9	60.50	32,812.1	196.86
2009	07	11,111.7	1,956.83	886.49	1,017.29	10,041.3	53.05	32,648.1	172.48
2009	08	11,102.2	1969.22	886.61	1,021.77	10,019.6	60.84	32,550.6	197.65
2009	09	11,083.1	1,984.44	883.75	1,018.45	9,982.4	82.24	32,403.3	266.95
2009	10	11,060.6	1,969.50	883.21	1,014.54	9,974.3	71.75	32,352.2	232.72
2009	11	11,089.8	1,980.72	884.46	1,012.97	9,993.5	83.29	32,391.1	269.96
2009	12	11,128.5	1,999.85	882.81	1,010.37	10,011.5	106.67	32,427.6	345.50
2010	01	11,121.7	2,011.21	890.95	1,022.53	10,001.4	97.73	32,374.4	316.34
2010	02	11,129.1	2,017.32	890.08	1,022.59	10,001.9	104.65	32,356.1	338.54
2010	03	11,158.6	2,045.74	891.01	1,024.40	10,003.8	130.33	32,342.2	421.35
2010	04	11,242.3	2,053.22	899.13	1,030.21	10,088.2	123.88	32,594.2	400.24
2010	05	11,301.2	2,060.81	905.24	1,038.61	10,145.6	116.96	32,757.7	377.63
2010	06	11,321.6	2,070.92	906.35	1,040.06	10,157.0	124.51	32,770.2	401.71
2010	07	11,318.4	2,068.51	908.08	1,055.07	10,158.0	105.36	32,748.2	339.66
2010	08	11,351.7	2,098.86	909.73	1,060.81	10,162.6	128.32	32,736.1	413.35
2010	09	11,341.5	2,087.58	910.02	1,065.68	10,163.9	111.88	32,713.9	360.10
2010	10	11,379.7	2,091.47	912.60	1,076.83	10,200.9	102.04	32,807.9	328.17
2010	11	11,403.6	2,097.62	911.96	1,079.75	10,217.9	105.91	32,839.3	340.18
2010	12	11,428.5	2,096.45	911.62	1,083.64	10,243.7	101.19	32,901.3	325.00
2011	01	11,520.9	2,088.64	824.68	1,127.99	10,257.0	135.97	32,925.5	436.47
2011	02	11,520.9	2,085.60	824.24	1,126.57	10,259.6	134.79	32,915.3	432.44
2011	03	11,534.0	2,099.08	823.32	1,124.26	10258.2	151.50	32,891.2	485.75

The problem with the figures in the government table is that they are not adjusted for inflation, but there are figures at the bottom of the table to allow one to do that. We have done that for you in our table. The reason that it is critical to do that is because there is no way to tell if the government or we the people are better off or worse off than previously without making that adjustment. If you get a $5 a week raise but you are spending more than $5 a week more for groceries and gasoline than you were previously, then you are actually worse off in spite of the raise you got. Using the ratio of current dollars to 2005 dollars allows us to adjust all of the other figures in table 2.6 to 2005 dollars so we are not comparing apples to oranges. The population figures in the last line of table 2.6 allow us to calculate any figure to a per capita amount so we can see whether the average American is better off or not compared to a previous time. Indeed, we can do that for the government itself as well to see how much we are receiving from the government in benefits and paying to it in taxes and contributions to things like Social Security and Medicare.

In line 1 of table 2.6 is the combined total income of all of us as individuals in billions of dollars on a month by month basis and that is in the column marked PERS INC in our table adjusted to 2005 dollars. Part of our income is from the government itself in the form of social security, medicare, unemployment benefits, etc. This amount is provided on line 14 in table 2.6 and is in the column marked TRANS, That is because the government calls the direct benefits it provides to us current personal transfer receipts. The amount we contribute to entitlement programs is found on line 20 in table 2.6 and is shown in the column marked CONTR. Likewise, line 21 gives the total amount we pay in taxes and is in the column marked TAXES in our table.

The next column is a figure not provided directly by table 2.6 but is calculated by subtracting the transfers and adding back in our contributions to government benefit programs. We call this PRIV INC since this represents what our total income would be without the government having these benefit programs. We would not be receiving things like social security or Medicare nor contributing to them either. The next column gives us a figure of what effect the government has on us because it is the transfers to us minus the contributions and taxes we pay. Since it costs money to run the government, part of our income should go to the government to keep it going and hence be a negative figure to our own income. We might add that the sum of the private income per capita and the net government action is the total per capita income in 2005 dollars and it should and does agree with the figure provided in line 32 of table 2.6 plus or minus some minor rounding of amounts.

Two things immediately jump out at you from this table. One is that the government benefits (transfers) are way more than our contributions to these programs and as you go down the table towards the more recent months, you will see that it is getting progressively worse. That in a nutshell is why social security is going broke. You will notice that the contributions suddenly drop quite a bit starting in 2011. That is because the two political parties decided to "forgive" part of the social security receipts for all of 2011. Hardly a peep was heard in opposition to this idea but it does mean that social security will go broke that much sooner.

The second conclusion is the most startling and most unbelievable fact from our table found in that last column. At the top of the table back in 2005 through 2007, every one of us, including children, was ponying up between $1,855 and $2,340 to run the government and pay for all those entitlement program benefits some of us get. Suddenly that figure crashes in the middle of 2008 to less than half of that figure in June of 2008. By the first of 2009, this figure is down to $666 apiece. By April, it is down to pocket change. Starting in May of 2009, the figure goes positive and has been that way ever since. In the last two years, the average American has effectively not contributed one dime to run the government or pay for those entitlement programs. On the contrary, the government is sending some of us a lot of money because it is averages out to as much as $513 on an annualized basis for every last man, woman and child in the United States.

How can this be you ask? Taxes have not actually been lowered because all they did was extend the Bush tax cuts already in place last December. Remember all of those give away programs where the government actually sent most of us a check? How about cash for clunkers and the first time homebuyer's credits at $8,000 per pop? Of course, programs like unemployment benefits and food stamps are running up the costs of all of those benefit programs just as tax collections are dropping due to an economy in the toilet as well. So how well did all those programs handing out goodies to some of us, but not all of us, work? Look at the private income per capita column to find out. That figure peaked at $35,113 in December of 2007. It dropped steadily down until it bottomed out at $32,342 in March of 2010. At the peak, we were sending the government $2,263 apiece per year and managing quite well. At the bottom, the government was sending each of us $421 on the average every year.

In other words, our own average private income dropped from $35,113 to $32,342 for a loss of $2,771. The government went from taking in $2,263 to putting out $421 for a total turnaround of $2,684 in loss of income and outlays per person. The government attempted to make up for the loss of income by sending back all of the money we sent it and a whole bunch more. While that is no way to run a railroad, let alone a government, one can argue that the economic conditions justified these emergency measures. However, private income per capita has been increasing for over a year now but the government is still pouring out $485 in borrowed money to each of us on the average. The private income per capita has increased to $32,891 for a gain of $549. At the very least, the government needs to stop sending us money and start collecting some once again.

We can begin by repealing the "forgiving" of part of the withholding taxes. The table shows us that contributions have dropped from $911 billion to $823 billion while the private income has actually started falling again from $32,925 to $32,891 during the same time. Clearly, this is not stimulating anything. We also need to repeal all of the special benefit programs added to "help" the struggling economy. The money is not being spread anywhere near equally. Car buyers and home buyers got huge special benefits and the rest of us got zilch. Not only that but when these programs stopped, they dried up both markets for months as the potential pool of buyers was dried up as all of those who could buy, did so while the getting was good. When is the government ever going to learn that it is doing more harm than good and by the time it gets around to applying a band-aid, the wound is already starting to heal?