"You Lie" - Fact-Checking Obama's SOTU Job "Gains" Claims | Zero Hedge:
Jobs & the Deficit
As he has done in the past, Obama embellished the statistical record of his presidency by selective omissions.
Jobs — He crowed about “more than 14 million new jobs,” when the net gain in total employment since he first took office is actually just under 9.3 million. What he didn’t spell out is that he was omitting the more than 4 million jobs lost during the first 13 months of his presidency, and ignoring losses of state and local government jobs as well.
Though he did not make it clear, he was actually referring to the change only in private sector jobs, and only since the job losses hit bottom in February 2010. And as of December that gain indeed stood at 14.1 million.
Unemployment rate — The president also referred to “an unemployment rate cut in half.” Actually, the jobless rate when he took office was 7.8 percent, and it has dropped to 5 percent as of December. It’s only “cut in half” if measured from the worst point of his presidency, which was the 10 percent rate recorded in October 2009.
Manufacturing — Obama also cherry-picked when he spoke of manufacturing jobs. The president said, “That’s just part of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years.” The gain was 878,000 to be exact, measured from the low point in his presidency.
But of course, he has been president for seven years, not just six. And over his entire time in office, the U.S. has lost 230,000 manufacturing jobs, dropping from 12,561,000 jobs in January 2009 to 12,331,000 in December 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Deficit — He also boasted that “we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.” That’s close to true if measured from the $1.4 trillion deficit run up in fiscal 2009. The final figure for FY 2015 — which ended Sept. 30 — was $438.9 billion.
So that’s still 31 percent of the 2009 figure, which is closer to a two-thirds reduction than a three-quarters reduction.
More important, it ignores Obama’s own contribution to that record 2009 deficit. As we’ve shown before, Obama’s early initiatives increased FY 2009 spending — and thus the deficit — by as much as $203 billion. So his claim to have reduced the deficit by three-quarters is akin to a merchant who raises his price one day and declares “75 percent off” the next.
'via Blog this'
Jobs & the Deficit
As he has done in the past, Obama embellished the statistical record of his presidency by selective omissions.
Jobs — He crowed about “more than 14 million new jobs,” when the net gain in total employment since he first took office is actually just under 9.3 million. What he didn’t spell out is that he was omitting the more than 4 million jobs lost during the first 13 months of his presidency, and ignoring losses of state and local government jobs as well.
Though he did not make it clear, he was actually referring to the change only in private sector jobs, and only since the job losses hit bottom in February 2010. And as of December that gain indeed stood at 14.1 million.
Unemployment rate — The president also referred to “an unemployment rate cut in half.” Actually, the jobless rate when he took office was 7.8 percent, and it has dropped to 5 percent as of December. It’s only “cut in half” if measured from the worst point of his presidency, which was the 10 percent rate recorded in October 2009.
Manufacturing — Obama also cherry-picked when he spoke of manufacturing jobs. The president said, “That’s just part of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years.” The gain was 878,000 to be exact, measured from the low point in his presidency.
But of course, he has been president for seven years, not just six. And over his entire time in office, the U.S. has lost 230,000 manufacturing jobs, dropping from 12,561,000 jobs in January 2009 to 12,331,000 in December 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Deficit — He also boasted that “we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.” That’s close to true if measured from the $1.4 trillion deficit run up in fiscal 2009. The final figure for FY 2015 — which ended Sept. 30 — was $438.9 billion.
So that’s still 31 percent of the 2009 figure, which is closer to a two-thirds reduction than a three-quarters reduction.
More important, it ignores Obama’s own contribution to that record 2009 deficit. As we’ve shown before, Obama’s early initiatives increased FY 2009 spending — and thus the deficit — by as much as $203 billion. So his claim to have reduced the deficit by three-quarters is akin to a merchant who raises his price one day and declares “75 percent off” the next.
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment