Both Reagan and Obama took office when unemployment was considered fairly high. In February, 1981, Reagan’s first full month as president, unemployment was at 7.4% and was slowly improving. It dropped down to 7.2% by April, his third month in office.
In February, 2009, Obama’s first full month in office, unemployment was at 8.2% and rising rapidly. The economy was already losing 750,000 jobs per month before Obama was sworn in.
Look closely at what happened during each president’s first 2 years in office. By October, 2009, Obama’s 9th month in office, unemployment peaked at 10.1%. After that, we started to see job growth and the unemployment rate declined over the next 2 years. The longer his policies were in effect, the more the economy improved.
Compare that to what happened during Reagan’s first two years. Although unemployment was stable when he first took office, after about 7 months, it started rising. After his first full year, unemployment climbed to 8.5% and it continued to rise throughout his 2nd year. Nearly two full years after Reagan took office, unemployment was at 10.8%, higher than it ever reached under Obama. It wasn’t until nearly 2 ½ years into Reagan’s presidency that unemployment finally dropped below 10%.
There is a stark contrast between what happened with Reagan and what happened with Obama. Under Obama, unemployment briefly topped 10% during his first year and then began to go down. Under Reagan, unemployment remained above 10% for the better part of a year.
Most of the job losses that occurred during Obama’s presidency happened during the first few months as a result of the deep recession that began a year before he took office. Less than a year into his term, the economy showed steady improvement. By contrast, the job losses under Reagan didn’t begin until about six months after he became president and continued to get worse for the next 18 months.
The severity of the economic crisis that Obama inherited cannot be over-emphasized. Not since the Great Depression had we seen such massive job losses as were occurring at the time Obama was sworn in. It would be difficult to find any other time in our country’s history when 750,000 jobs were lost in a single month. Economists predicted that we would have 20% unemployment within a year. It is remarkable that unemployment peaked at only 10.1% and that the economy began improving as quickly as it did.
Well gee, compared to the success that Obama has demonstrated in staving off another depression, wrestling the runaway economy back under control, and creating jobs, it kind of makes the Reagan much flaunted success in this area look kind of anemic.
I wonder if the Republicans have any MORE GOP icons they would like to put forward as sacrificial lambs for our President to crush?
Bristol/Nancy French speaks again!
ReplyDelete"Oh, and in that post I also said generally kids do better with mother/father families – the kind of family I’d like to have for Tripp one day."
You Betcha!
OMG, if kids do so much better with a mother AND a father what's Bristol's excuse for getting drunk on a coed camping trip when she was 15? What's her excuse for getting knocked up when she was 16? What exactly is her idea of kids "doing well"?
DeleteGood Luck with that "I'd like to have for Tripp one day" thingy. Get busy, Bristol, start kissing frogs or something.
DeleteUncle Gryph, please, please with a cherry on top, reFudiate Brancy's latest attempt at garnering sympathy and interest in her "reality" show or else we will hijack this thread! Lol.
ReplyDeleteShe ain't part of "pop culture" but a mouthpiece for the far right religious fringe
I bet the Republican Party management could pinch a penny in two with their collective assholes every time Brancy lets her thoughts flow through her fingers.
ReplyDeleteI would like to make this very easy for anyone who gets into a debate with a Republican. There is a big difference between what was going on during Reagan's administration and today-- The Peoples Republic of China. In the 1980's, we still had manufacturing jobs here in the US. Today, those jobs have been lost to China, or another country whose labor costs $1.a day.
ReplyDeleteNorquist worked very hard on RealTime to compare Obama with Reagan. Bill Maher was attempting to counter his point but he should said: you cannot compare Obama with a president from 30 years ago. That's like compare LBJ with FDR. Different times. The "D's" really to push back this nonsense comparing the Obama administration with the Reagan administration because when Reagan was in office you think the "R's" were comparing him to JFK? Of course not. They were comparing him to Jimmy Carter.
ReplyDeleteWho on earth cares what Grover Norquist thinks? Does he hold any elected office? Why is everyone so scared of this idiot? Of course he would never mention that "trickle down" tax cuts were so disastrous that even the Reagan Administration gave up on them.
DeleteBeaglemom
It's a con job. The Republicans know that if people compare Obama with Bush, he gets four stars but if they can dig up Reagan's rotting corpse from the grave then they can make it, "the zero against the hero."
DeleteToo true, Gryphen! I started & finished college during Reagan's first term & know first-hand how dragging & difficult that economy was. And, most people knew it, & knew whose policies had made is suck so hard. Those were the days of "Farm Aid", steel mills closing right & left, the flatlining of personal middle class incomes, corporate outsourcing really ramping up, customer service dropping off CEO's priority lists, making employees "do more with less"; not just as a temporary solution, but as a permanent condition, and the huge, overwhelming lie that is "trickle down economics".
ReplyDeleteThe GOP rewriting of history as regards Reagan will hopefully be show up, long term, as the lie it is. He wasn't the disaster that W. Bush was, but he started the country down that path. And, like W. he really didn't know or give a damn about the average person & how devastated they were by his economy. At least, though, he was willing to sit down with Congress and work on problems; he was not the "my way or the highway" ass the GOP has become. Or maybe he was just better at hiding it. An actor; first, last & always.
I recommend the book "Tear Down this Myth" to anyone who is too young to remember the Reagan years, it will be an eye-opener. He is not the saint the right-wing wants to canonize.
Republicans are known for trying to rewrite history! They are liars and it's being proven time and time again.
ReplyDeleteJust look at some of the Republicans we see today -Boehner (House/Congress), Palin "quitter governor/Alaska", past VP Cheney, past President Bush, Senator Murkowski/Congress/Alaska, Gov Perry/TX, Santorum/religious fanatic, Senator John McCain/AZ (also picked Palin!!!), Jan Brewer/AZ, Mitt Romney and on and on. They are ALL very frightening people!
Pay attention at the voting booth folks!
President Obama and VP Joe Biden in 2012!
Interesting set of facts. Even more interesting when you factor in the massive loss of manufacturing jobs to China et al. that St. Rawnie didn't have to deal with (H/T to Anon@10:46am). But even though the facts are solid don't expect to change too many conservative minds with them. They'll find fault in anything President Obama accomplishes. Unemployment could be at 1% and the right would be howling that Obama is destroying jobs at Goodwill and the Social Security Administration.
ReplyDeleteA mythologized Reagan is the only GOP icon that remotely fits with their current fantasy economics.
ReplyDeleteI want to see Grover Norquist and other GOP big wigs discuss the Reagan-Obama recession policy outcomes face-to-face with Bruce Bartlett, Reagan economic adviser, and David Stockton, Reagan budget director.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/bruce-bartlett-on-where-the-right-went-wrong/
http://billmoyers.com/content/david-stockman-on-the-folly-of-anti-tax-crusades/
O/T but Brewer just signed a bill allowing companies to fire any woman on birth control.
ReplyDeleteWell then it's a dang shame that Gristle Palin sold her house. She'd never get fired in AZ.
DeleteHow is that legal? Hi -- HIPPA!!!
DeleteAlso -- Of course Bristol wouldn't get fired...she'd need a JOB for that...
Jesse,
ReplyDeleteThe biggest factor in the Reagan v Obama presidencies is this: inflation was OUT. OF. CONTROL. during the Reagan years - but it is negligible in the Obama Administration.
It has been so low during the Obama Administration that Social Security recipients didn't receive a C.O.L.A. increase for two years - 2010 and 2011.
Fact: if the economy is manipulated to turn around too quickly (as the Reagan Administration did...), inflation is the result. Jobs losses and interest rates soar, with prices spiraling on just about everything.
Slow, steady, sustainable growth is the goal, with as little inflation as possible; Mr. Obama has succeeded brilliantly in that regard.
THAT is the REAL DIFFERENCE in the two administrations.
- KAO
Their idiots to try to compare the two. By doing so they'll destroy the myth of Reagan Presidency to all of their supporters. But, you know they will try to embellish it by using false and misleading data. The best way to compare both would be to look at the first 4 years only and start with what each President inherited. Reagan also inherited a poor economy from Carter, so each would at least start with similar economy's. If the comparison was done by one organization or a group of chosen professional, say a group of university economists from different area's of the country, and only compared valid data, I think an interesting result would emerge in favor of Obama. Of course, the Republican leaders such as McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor would claim the study and conclusion were invalid for one reason or another after the results were released if the results favored Obama. So you would have to try to get them agree to the economist chosen and the data at the very beginning of the study. A week or two after the results were released, a meeting could be held to answer any question the politicians may have concerning the data and methods used and to answer any concerns the losing party may try to bring up to discredit the study and comparison.
ReplyDeleteJust my thoughts on how to do a fair study and a means of keeping the losing party from discrediting the results.
10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan
ReplyDelete1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.
2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.
3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.
4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/05/142288/reagan-centennial/?mobile=nc
Great post. Why is it, when someone passes away, they somehow become something they never were when they were alive? They want to ignore the Bush Regime, but Ronny doesn't cut it. They're yakking about sending arms to Syria because Iran Contra rilly worked out well for us!
ReplyDeleteThe prudent and businesslike 39th President (James Earl Carter, US Naval Academy '46, aka "the Peanut Farmer") had begun putting this disrupted nation on a sound footing for the future; Ronald Wilson Reagan (aka 6-6-6) blew that apart and we've been running the country on a credit card while the infrastructure crumbles ever since!
ReplyDeleteThat is correct. Jimmy Carter has never gotten the credit he deserved. He was prescient about gas and oil prices and his economic policies were working the country on to a solid footing. His administration also did all of the negotiating with Iran for the release of the hostages. It was the Iranian leader who, at the last minute, decided to wait until after Reagan's inauguration ceremony to release the hostages. So then, gentleman that he wasn't, Reagan took all of the credit.
DeleteOh yes, that recalls yet another myth: "the Iranians were afraid of Raygun!"
DeleteExcuse me? The ayatollahs delayed the release of hostages until Carter was powerless, and RWR assumed command of America's armed forces because they feared... who, again?