Failed Obama Policies Put More Americans in Poverty

 

IBDEditorials.com

Obamanomics: As the president began the first year of his second term, the U.S. poverty rate rose to a level not seen since the 1960s. What we have here is a colossal failure of government policy.

The Census Bureau says that 50 million Americans, roughly one in six — almost 17% — are living below the poverty line, which is defined as earnings of less than $23,021 a year for a family of four. Apparently 20% of the nation's children are living in poverty.

We learn this not from a screaming New York Times or Washington Post headline. Nor have we learned it from any of the networks or major dailies that are relentless cheerleaders for Barack Obama. This news is found in an Associated Press story carried by the British Daily Mail that is more focused on alleged shrinking aid for the poor than it is on the grim data.

Of course this is what we'd expect, given that the mainstream press is so busy praising Obama that it misses — probably willfully — the disastrous economy over which he's presided.

The 50 million Americans living below the poverty line aren't lone markers of Obama's failure.

Since the economy began its tentative recovery just a few months into his first term, the unemployment rate has been nothing but ugly. It sits now at 7.7%, down from its peak of 10% in October 2009.

While that might seem an improvement, it's not.

As we noted a month ago, "just 58.6% of Americans work today, down from 60.6% when Obama took office." If the labor force participation rate were the same as it was when Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be higher than 12%.

Another sorry marker is annual GDP growth.

Obama's average has been less than 2% per quarter, annualized. In the last quarter of 2012, it was an almost invisible 0.4%.

For all of 2011, GDP growth was 1.8%, in 2012 it was 2.2%, well below the 2.5% to 3% pace that most economists believe is the norm. And, by the way, the White House had forecast 4% growth in each of these years.

Again, bear in mind that the recession lifted in June 2009, before Obama's policies could have had a positive impact on the economy. The economic stagnation and our jobless recovery have occurred after the implementation of his policies — the nearly $1 trillion stimulus, tax hikes, ObamaCare, hyper-regulation — and during the heat of his class-division rhetoric that has obsessed on government-enforced fairness.

And don't forget, appropriate to the news about growing poverty, that a congressman once congratulated Michelle Obama for her husband's stimulus bill, calling it "the best anti-poverty bill in a generation."

Maybe that lawmaker should revise and extend that remark, as congressmen do when they've made outrageous statements on the record.

Under Obama, the poverty rate grew from 14.3% in 2009 to 15.1% in 2010, then fell to 15% in 2011 before jumping to today's sorry rate. A man who has promoted himself as a defender of the poor and middle class should have a better record. But as long as he refuses to give up on failed left-wing policies, he never will.