Damn right America is better off than it was four years ago.
Four years ago was September 2008. George W. Bush was president and Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers was collapsing. It was a time of fear. It was a time of panic about the future. Recalling that anxiety is unsettling. But it's important for comparison sake.
Lehman filed for bankruptcy this week four years ago - Sept. 15, 2008. Global financial markets spun into a panic. Credit markets froze worldwide. The stock market plunged. GM and Chrysler fell into crisis. Foreclosures were spiking and housing prices plummeting. Main Street shops and factories couldn't get ordinary loans essential to sustain routine business. Nearly half a million workers lost their jobs that month. It was the ninth consecutive month of massive job losses. The Bush administration had converted a vibrant economy and budget surplus it had inherited from former President Bill Clinton into the Great Recession and massive deficits. America was still mired in two wars, including one Bush started on false pretenses.
Now, in September 2012, global financial markets have stabilized. Credit is available to Main Street. GM and Chrysler are building cars and creating jobs. Unemployment is declining as the private sector has added jobs to the economy every month for the past 30. The value of housing is rising once again, creating wealth for the middle class. Now there's a financial reform law to prevent another Wall Street bailout. There's Obamacare to help families retain and secure health insurance. The war in Iraq is over and Osama bin Laden is dead. Is America better off than it was four years ago? Hell, yes it is!
September 2012 can't be described as boom times. But it's sure not the dread-filled days of September 2008. As former President Clinton so eloquently said last week in his convention speech, describing the Republican attitude toward President Obama:
"We left him a total mess. He hasn't cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in."
The Romney plan to "restore" America involves repealing, revoking and rejecting every advance President Obama has achieved, including health insurance reform and Wall Street regulation. As Andy Borowitz suggested, if Romney could, he'd revive Osama bin Laden and kill Detroit. Anything to take America back(wards).
Luckily, Romney wouldn't be able to undo President Obama's auto bailout - although he opposed it from day one, urging "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." He wrote:
"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye."
Would America be better off without GM and Chrysler? No, it would not. That according to 1.45 million employed people.
Also luckily, Romney couldn't undo President Obama's stimulus. He'd like to, though. His campaign is repeating the false GOP meme that the money was wasted.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs. Romney would have preferred no stimulus. He'd have abandoned those workers - your father-in-law, your kid, your neighbor - rendering them unable to pay their mortgages, unable to support their families, unable to imagine a future.
Would America be better off without the stimulus? No, it would not. That according to 3.3 million employed people.
A President Romney could, however, reverse the financial and health insurance reform measures. And he's pledged to do that "on day one." Without financial reform, Wall Street could resume, unfettered, the same risky betting that plunged the country into the Great Recession.
Without the health reform law, insurance companies would immediately cancel coverage for millions of young adults now on their parents' plans and cut off untold millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions and those who have exceeded the now-banned lifetime caps. In addition, senior citizens would have to pay more for prescription drugs and preventative care.
Would America be better off without the financial and health insurance reforms? No, it would not. That according to Americans who would be sicker and poorer and at greater economic risk without the laws.
Romney also promises to restore America to the Bush days of special deals for the rich and up the ante by giving the 1 percent additional tax reductions. Bush didn't pay for his tax cuts, resulting in massive deficits, and Romney hasn't specified how he would either.
Would the country be better off if the rich paid even less in taxes? No, it would not. That according to the 99 percent and President Obama. He pledges to end the Bush tax cuts for those making over a quarter million and begin paying down the nation's debts.
President Obama plans to take the country forward, to create a better tomorrow.
As former President Clinton walked onto the convention floor last week, the Fleetwood Mac song "Don't Stop" played in the background. This is the refrain:
"Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone."
Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger
Any surprise thats he touting the company line?
"Three weeks before Election Day, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., center, arrives for the dedication of a wind farm in Henderson, Nev., on Oct. 12, 2010. With him are, second from left, Kai Huang, deputy mayor of Shenyang, China; Jinxiang Lu, second from right, chairman and CEO of A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese company, and Tom Conway, right, international vice president of the United Steelworkers union. Reid's support, and the plan to create jobs in Nevada, helped blunt congressional criticism that stimulus money was going to the Chinese company, which also plans a large wind farm in West Texas. The company is hoping to receive money through the U.S. Energy Department."
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40565987/ns/today-today_news/t/wind-their-backs-powerful-democrats-help-chinese-energy-firm-chase-stimulus-money/
The United Steelworkers (one word) union fought to secure benefits for retired Century workers after the company arbitrarily cut them off. And the USW won.
Everyone is hoping a deal can be cut to provide both companies with affordable electricity. Electrical costs are a huge issue in aluminum making and that is not the fault of either George Bush or Barack Obama.
Lest we forget, it was Clinton, not Bush who created the mortgage crisis that led to the meltdown and the great recession (it is easy to research).
In 2011 Obama spending equaled the entire combined earned income of every individual in the private sector. Since the government is 100% dependent on the private sector for revenue, how much further do you think this can go?
The right thing to do does not include piling on entitlements and creating dependencies on government programs that will not be there in a decade?
And the big 0 (that is a zero, not an O) isn't done as he said "It’ll require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one." FDR needed WWII, I guess the bid 0 is talking about WWIII.
Keep on believing.
Secondly, the reason all of those millions of people began defaulting on their loans, the first domino to start the fall, is that those people began losing their jobs. The Republican party enabled corporations to outsource millions of jobs with no penalty. That is the true beginning of the crisis. Those people COULD afford their homes when they bought them. How many of you could afford your mortgage if your job was sent to China and your unemployment benefits were next to nothing and there were no jobs to be had?
I don't know why the right continues to get away with these constant lies!
In addition, Clinton left Bush with a budget surplus. Bush managed to double the national debt in his 8 years in office and leave Obama with the worst recession since the Great Depression. Nice work, GOP!
Finally, no one makes mortgage companies and banks issue loans. They were eager to write those mortgages because they were selling them at big profit to Wall Street, which was converting them into derivatives.
1. My stocks, my income since my manufacturing job went away under Bush, ARE UP 50% under Obama. My stocks were down drastically under Bush.
2. My wife got a 15% salary bump (with Obama) but took a paycut with Bush.
3. My wife LOST 6 employees during Bush and has hired three back under Obama.
4. I LOVE my middleclass tax cuts from Obama.
5. We're doing some home renovation which is employing half a dozen small businesses-we'd NEVER have undertaken this while Bush's economy was tanking.
6. I actually FEEL BETTER under Obama with his support of Equal Rights in marriage, support of college student loans (a GREAT investment though we don't have kids), in support of immigrant families, and his powerful support of a diverse America. How many Americans were potential Nobel Prize winners that never got the chance to compete because they were women, blacks, hispanics, or asian?
7. Obama has ENDED a war and will END ANOTHER rather than START more endless wars.
8. With Resolution Trust Authority and financial regulatory reform, Obama will straighten up banks, lower leverage ratios, or if they cheat, he'll bust the mofos up.
9. Obama saved the entire world economy...and gets no credit for that massive achievement that Bush had brought to the brink of collapse.
Am I better off? You kidding? I'm voting Obama.
Uh, ya...definitely better off.
They only complain when a liar is using their music.
Very telling.
Remember that?
We are a union.
And when the president showed up with the fire truck, the republicans stood on the hose. When President Obama called in the ambulances, the republicans took the wheels off the gurnees.
Never forget that the GOP declared publicly and privately that their #1 priorty was to hamstring the president. And you have to say one thing, they kept their promise. They'd rather let America bleed than see a second term for Obama.
5:33pm
NYC
The question is: "Are YOU better off?" That's easier to judge than "Is the country better off?"