Posted on 03/30/2012 9:19:26 AM PDT by IbJensen
(CNSNews.com) - At a campaign event in Iowa on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden blamed the continuing high level of unemployment in the United States on what he called “this God-awful recession we’ve inherited.”
According to the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research, the last recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009—just five months into President Barack Obama’s term in office.
In the 33 months since the recession ended, according to the NBER, the U.S. economy has been in a period of expansion. One of the current members of the NBER committee that determines when recessions begin and end is Christina Romer, who formerly served as chairperson of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
(Less than two weeks before Obama took office in 2009, Romer published a report saying Obama's stimulus plan, if enacted, would keep unemployment under 8 percent. In fact, unemployment has never been under 8 percent since then--even though in February 2009 Congress did enact Obama's stimulus plan, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated at that time would cost $787 billion.)
To explain what he believes is happening in the U.S. economy, Biden told the crowd at a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa, a story about his father.
“He said, Joey, you got to understand one thing, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck,” said Biden. “It’s about your dignity. It’s about your respect. It’s about your sense of yourself. It’s about your place in the community.
“And too many people have been stripped of their dignity as a consequence of this God-awful recession we’ve inherited,” said Biden. “And we’re determined--we’re determined--I think all of us, Republican and Democrat--are determined to turn that around.”
The expansion that began in June 2009, when the last recession ended, has not seen the growth in real GDP and the decrease in unemployment that has occurred in other recent economic expansions.
In no quarter of Obama’s presidency, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, has real GDP grown at an annual rate of as much as 4 percent. The most robust growth during the Obama presidency occurred in the first quarter of 2010 when real GDP grew at a rate of 3.9 percent.
In the last four quarters, real GDP has grown at a rate of 0.4, 1.3, 1.8 and 3.0 percent.
President George W. Bush also experienced a recession in the early months of his presidency. That recession, according to NBER, began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001. But by the third quarter of 2003, according to BEA, real GDP was growing at a rate of 6.7 percent. Over the course of 2004, the year that Bush sought reelection, real GDP grew at 3.5 percent.
During George W. Bush’s first term, unemployment peaked at 6.3 percent in June 2003, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the election year of 2004, unemployment stayed below 6 percent, peaking that year at 5.8 percent in March.
The highest that unemployment went during George W. Bush’s presidency was 7.8 percent—the level it hit in January 2009, the month Bush handed over the office to Obama.
After January 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, unemployment has never been lower than 8.3 percent in any month. That is the level unemployment hit in February 2009, Obama’s first full month in the Oval Office. That is also the level it stood at in February 2012--after Obama had been president for three full years.
Prior to Obama’s presidency, the last time unemployment was as high as 8.0 percent was in January 1984, the year President Reagan sought reelection. In 1984, however, according to the BEA, the U.S. economy was booming, growing at a 7.5 percent pace for the year. From January to November of 2004, unemployment dropped from 8.0 percent to 7.2 percent.
Try created, Biden, you blathering, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic. You, that sociopathic muslim and the complicit congress, are responsible for this mess.
How about all the bills your party got passed that forbade banks from even considering creditworthiness as a factor for lending?
How about all the resistance your party put up when people demanded increased oversight and accountability from Freddie and Fannie?
How about all the bonuses that your buddies whom you placed in leadership positions at Freddie and Fannie collected which, by the way, found their way into your election coffers?
How about the run on the banks that Barney Frank caused when he told the banks that Freddie and Fannie were in trouble, something he wasn't even authorized to do.
Republicans are to blame as well, they were weak, ineffective, which is a a tradition Boehner, McConnell, Lugar, Grassley, et al, are carrying on well, but you, Joe Biden, you and your party caused this mess. Don't even try hanging that on anyone else.
Try created, Biden, you blathering, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic. You, that sociopathic muslim and the complicit congress, are responsible for this mess.
How about all the bills your party got passed that forbade banks from even considering creditworthiness as a factor for lending?
How about all the resistance your party put up when people demanded increased oversight and accountability from Freddie and Fannie?
How about all the bonuses that your buddies whom you placed in leadership positions at Freddie and Fannie collected which, by the way, found their way into your election coffers?
How about the run on the banks that Barney Frank caused when he told the banks that Freddie and Fannie were in trouble, something he wasn't even authorized to do.
Republicans are to blame as well, they were weak, ineffective, which is a a tradition Boehner, McConnell, Lugar, Grassley, et al, are carrying on well, but you, Joe Biden, you and your party caused this mess. Don't even try hanging that on anyone else.
And what would you two stooges know about God, Joe? You're a lapsed cafeterial Catholic and your boss is a lapsed human being.
Inherited from themselves - it was doing quite well prior to the Democrat takeover of Congress in 2007 - which he and Obama were part of and voting in the new out of control spending policies (managing to make the Republican spending look thrifty by comparison...no small accomplishment). What was the unemployment rate then? 4.8%? That’s what they inherited from the Republicans - 4.8% unemployment. They turned that into over 10% unemployment at one point. They certainly delivered on their promise to bring change.
... was obviously more full of sh!t and wound up tighter than usual, even for him.
Good ol’ Joe Biden: a week’s worth of gaffes in every speech.
Haha, I was reading the objective article full of statistics, which all of a sudden became “...Biden, you blathering, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic.” Double take
How many different rooms has aO-Bama rented for Biden in the local Washington Nut-house?
If Vice-President Biden would stop taking the Lord God Almighty's name in vain and would start seeking God in the name of Jesus Christ and follow His commands, this country would turn around. 2 Chronicles 7:14
Heard Bob Schieffer this morning commenting on how wonderful a VP Biden is in this administration, quite different than Dick Cheney who, (paraphrasing) in a sense, ran his own shadow government under W....
Can you imagine what the press would do to him if he were Republican?
Bump
Yep, and his boss said if they couldn’t fix it in 4 years they should only have one term. See ya Joe, we will miss your gaffe-a-day.
Our RAT "friends" have been controlling the economy since the 2006 elections, and even before if you consider the cluster of turn-coat RINO's like McCain siding with the RATs. GWB was tied up in the back seat when Pelosi and Reed drove the economy into the ditch.
What a turd brain.
Funny, weren’t we told to get into the back of the bus, and let the Democrats drive? Seems to me that the Democrats blamed the Republicans for everything that went wrong - and with a filibuster-proof Congress, Peloski told us to “shut up and take it”.
Now, that they have made matters Trillions of dollars worse, having had 4 years to ‘fix’ the problem - it’s still out fault?
When do they put the Big Boy Pants on, Cowboy-up, and take responsibility?
i thought they bought the presidency for like 600 million
If it was that bad Joe, why did you run? Weren’t you going to fix everything?
Funny but when Reagan “inherited” the recession from Carter in the 1982 elections and “Reaganoics” hadn’t taken hold on the economy, I bet Biden and other Democrats didn’t let republicans a f”ree get out of jail” card.
True words. This administration also inherited a strong military, low unemployment and a patriotic country - to name a few things. They have ruined everything. These people are sick.
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