The Economic Legacy of the Four-Year Democratic Congress

The American Thinker ^ | December 09, 2010 | Yossi Gestetner

[Scanian]

From early 2007 through the end of 2010, the Democrats had strong Majorities in -- and control of -- the US House of Representatives and also the U.S. Senate. Both are chambers where laws and policies that affect the economy are created and shaped.

The following table shows how the Democrat Congress performed on average during its four year tenure, vs. the average of the previous four years, 2003 through the end of 2006, when Republican were at the helm:

Issue/Topic Democrats Republicans

Jobs by Year - Average -1,583,000 +1,672,000

Jobs by Month - Average -131,916 +139,333

Unemployment Rate - Average 7.48% 5.3%

Budget Deficits - Avrage $1.143 Trillion $285 Billion

Dow (DJIA) 0.13% (0.53 Total) 11.04%

S & P 500 1.29% 15.02%

FDIC Bank Closures - Average 79.2 1.75

[deks]

The following table shows how the Democrat Congress performed on average during its four year tenure, vs. the average of the previous four years, 2003 through the end of 2006, when Republican were at the helm:

Issue/Topic	Democrats	Republicans
Jobs by Year - Average	-1,583,000	+1,672,000
Jobs by Month - Average	-131,916	+139,333
Unemployment Rate - Average	7.48%	5.3%
Budget Deficits - Avrage	$1.143 Trillion	$285 Billion
Dow (DJIA)	0.13% (0.53 Total)	11.04%
S & P 500	1.29%	15.02%
FDIC Bank Closures - Average	79.2	1.75

[rockinqsranch]

Interesting. Thanks for the post Scanian.

[Artie]

Thanks for the table. Please forward this to Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid. On second thought, don’t confuse them with the facts

[Aevery_Freeman]

But...but...but..., he inherited that mess!

[rlmorel]

Another great piece from the American Thinker...thanks for posting it. Liberalism is the greatest threat to the prosperity, security and safety of this country. This is the weakness of liberalism: They do what they “feel” is right, not what IS right. THEY DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA HOW TO DO ANYTHING.

Notice that when Republicans enter office, there is not an attitude of “We are going to completely stop doing things the way our predecessor did them, and we are going to do them our way from now on.” It is usually a very measured approach, letting things go the way they did for a period of time before making changes, and those changes are usually incremental, not radical.

This is because conservatives understand that you do not need to re-invent the wheel. The problem with reinventing wheels, policies or anything else is that you often make the same mistakes the first inventor did, unless you take extra care to see why those mistakes occurred.

Liberals do not have the humility to understand this. It is why liberals are all socialists to a greater or lesser degree and believe in big, centralized government.

I use the analogy of a jumbo jet flying through the sky on auto-pilot, with no flight crew present, and a passenger opens the cockpit door and enters.

Conservatives would enter the cockpit, look around and take stock of the situation. They might look at the fuel gauge, look at the attitude and get a general feel of the situation. They probably wouldn’t touch anything right away, realizing that there are circumstances where doing something for the sake of doing something can be far more harmful. They might decide to put the headphones on, see if they can communicate with anyone, see if they can hear anything, and so on. They would probably try to find someone who could talk them down, and failing that, might try to figure out if there was anyone onboard with piloting experience.

Liberals would enter the cockpit, look around and scream out “Nobody is flying the plane!” They would jump in the pilot seat, grab the control stick and shout “We have to get this plane on the ground or we’re all going to die!” They might dive the plane towards the earth, looking frantically for an airport, making the assumption that of course, you could fly a plane from the sky “just by looking around, there is the airport over there, let’s get to it!” without realizing that is one of the most difficult things even for veteran pilots who might have the advantage of at least being familiar with the area and comfortable with trying to pick up landmarks from the air. They would dive the plane, then suddenly realize they don’t know how to turn the plane, how to apply rudder or lower the flaps and landing gear (probably wouldn’t even realize those were needed) and would simultaneously realize they had no idea how to stabilize the plane in level flight or re-engage the autopilot. The passengers, feeling the gyrations of the aircraft and knowing something was wrong, would begin to panic, and before you know it, there would be a huge flaming hole in the ground.

It is the same thing with a military campaign, an economic crisis, an environmental issue, solving an education or social problem, or just about anything else you can think of.

Liberals see the levers, dials and controls of something powerful and complicated, and instead of figuring out how they work or even if they work, they make the assumption that no matter what, they can control this better than anyone or anything that controlled it before. They don’t even think that sometimes putting your hands on the levers of something powerful is much, much more damaging than keeping your bloody damned hands OFF of them.

If it is a military campaign, they get in their armchairs and begin looking at the maps, targets and forces involved, pick up the phones and begin issuing orders and edicts to generals. You end up with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Desert One and Mogadishu.

On environmental issues you end up with some kind of foreign species of fish that you brought in from South America to control some other kind of issue, and it ends up destroying the native ecosystem, or on a global scale, you destroy the ability to obtain energy for an energy dependent world because you need to save the existence of the Alaskan Spotted Lugwort. They determined through their “science” that DDT made the egg shells of predatory birds thin causing their populations to decrease, and viewing it as a canary in a coal mine, outlawed DDT, thereby condemning tens of millions of people (or over the years, perhaps even hundreds of millions) to misery and death from insect borne diseases such as malaria. Even worse, you end up with liberals trying to deliberately destroy industry and economies, an attempt to plunge the entire western world into a depression, and they base their desire to do this on “Global Warming”. To sum up this particular angle and encapsulate the liberal mindset on all these issues, but most importantly environmental ones, remember this quote from a feminist wall mural I see in Cambridge, MA: “INDICATION OF HARM, NOT PROOF OF HARM IS OUR CALL TO ACTION”. Look well upon that quote...it sums up liberalism in one compact line.

If it is a economic or social issue, they begin to make policy and throw money at it without even considering for a single damned second if what they are doing is really going to produce the expected result. If it doesn’t help or makes things worse, they simply throw more money and legislation at the issue, without bothering to dismantle the agencies or defund what they did before that failed miserably. In this, you end up with Rent Control (a liberal invention which destroys the availability of affordable housing), Social Security (a liberal invention, a Ponzi scheme on a grand scale that gave people the false security they didn’t have to save for themselves) the Great Society, Welfare, School Busing, declining ability of students and failing schools, disintegration of the family and soon, socialism and Third World Squalor.

What we have had for the last three full years is a display of liberals in charge. If we cannot roll back and eradicate the new Great Society and new “New Deal” legislation they have put in place, sixty years from now, we are going to see a fundamentally different USA, and not in a good way. This is a problem.

[Justa]

No need to elaborate. They’re just crooks.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

This is all true and Argument #1 as to why I will never vote for a Democrat for Congress no matter how “conservative” he or she pretends to be. Having said that, the “Republican” Congress that preceded the Dem Congress was an absolute disaster too, exceeded only by the Dem Congress we just had. 2002-2006 was the absolute low point of Republican rule in modern times—perhaps ever. We controlled everything yet George Bush and the Republican Congress went on a spending spree that laid the groundwork for the Dems insane spending. Historians will look back on these times as an era of bad government—a disaster from a fiscal perspective.

[ArmstedFragg]

One addition to your airline scenario: when recovered, the cockpit voice recorder would reveal that the last words heard were, “it’s not my fault!”.

[Scanian]

Glad you liked it. Those numbers should leave any ‘Rat speechless.

[Scanian]

Yes-—a lot of which started under the Pelosi/Reid Congress.

[newfreep]

Nice formatting - tells the story why liberalism/social ALWAYS fails.

[griswold3]

Nice post. But I’ve learned long ago not to confuse a ‘Progressives’ argument with facts and figures.
We’re so screwed!

[Scanian]

Did you see Megan Kelly leave Mr. Weiner speechless yesterday by hammering home a direct question and refusing to listen to spin?

[Hotlanta Mike]

All you have to look at is the fiscal mess and business climate in liberal paradises of Michigan, California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey to mention a few. Tax wealth until there is no more wealth (”the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”).

[deks]

BTTT. I try to help where I can. Thanks to Scanian for posting it.

[griswold3]

I plan to watch it. Somebody emailed me the video.

Megan Kelly rules!

[Scanian]

Anytime.

[deks]

I’m watching it now... starts to heat up after 4 minutes into the clip.

Catfight: Megyn Kelly vs Rep Weiner (D-NY) on Obama’s Tax Cuts & Death Tax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_P1zupIcY

[deks]

Weiner has a vicious, angry look in his eyes a couple of times right after 4:44 in the clip linked at reply #19.

Later he’s asked if it is fair for a man’s estate to be taxed at 35% when he’s already been taxed on that income his whole life, Weiner just keeps repeating “he’s dead” and “it’s unearned income”.