Four Reasons Why The Court’s Decision To Uphold Obamacare Is Good News For The Economy

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

The Supreme Court today upheld the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform law signed by President Obama in 2010, ruling 5-4 that the law was constitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan on the opinion. The individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance or pay a fine, was upheld as legal under Congress’ taxing ability.

Health care reform isn’t important just because it expands access to quality, affordable care, but also because rapidly rising costs and the fact that 30 million Americans don’t have insurance are weighing down the American economy. Here are four reasons why the Court’s decision is good news for the still-struggling economy:

1) Obamacare will reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2011 that Obamacare will reduce the federal deficit by $210 billionover the next decade. The law is expected to save about $1 trillion over its second decade, according to other CBO analyses. The CBO found that repealing the law, as Republicans attempted to do in 2011, would increase the deficit by$230 billion over the next 10 years.

2) Health care costs for young Americans won’t skyrocket. More than 3.1 million young Americans have insurance thanks to Obamacare. Without the law, the cost of acquiring an equivalent health care plan would have risen dramatically at a time when young people are still struggling with the effects of the Great Recession.

3) Millions of jobs will be created. Health reform will help create roughly 4 million jobs over the next decade, according to a 2010 Center for American Progress report, by reducing the cost of health care and making it cheaper for businesses to hire. The law will create between 250,000 and 400,000 jobs a year, and they will be spread across sectors: according to the study, the law will help create more than 200,000 manufacturing and 900,000 in the service sector by 2016.

4) It will be cheaper for employers to provide health care. American businesses are under tremendous pressure thanks to rising health care costs, and these costs are often passed on to customers (one study estimates that each car sold by General Motors contains $1,200 in built-in health costs). The ACA, however, will make it cheaper for businesses to provide care, and not just by reducing the cost of care. Small businesses are already receiving tax credits contained in the law to help insure their employees, and it has already offered more than $4.7 billion in reinsurance payments to companies that are providing health care to retirees who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare.

Even a judge who was a finalist for appointment to the Supreme Court under George W. Bush agreed that striking down health care would have had disastrous consequences for the American economy. “States’ rights are important in many spheres, but the benefits of a national economic policy must also be considered,” federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in February. “A vibrant economic order requires some political predictability, and the prospect of judges’ striking down commercial regulation on ill-defined and subjective bases is a prescription for economic chaos that the framers, in a simpler time, had the good sense to head off.” Fortunately, a majority on the Supreme Court agreed.

Still working on the dream of equality

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RNC's desperate spin on Obama recovery: The weather is conspiring against Republicans!

by Deaniac83/The People's view Great blog BTW


The GOP has a new enemy in their fight to stop jobs from being created: the weather! After news that the economy is escaping GOP's death grip with momentum on the side of jobs thanks to the leadership of President Obama, the RNC held a conference call for reporters. They spun the good news every which way possible to make it look like bad news, but this has to take the cake:

 In a conference call with reporters hosted by the RNC, economist Douglas Holtz Eakin said the current rate of growth was not strong enough to provide work for previously discouraged job seekers now returning to the labor force more optimistic about finding employment. He also expressed concern that the jobs numbers were being inflated by an unusually warm winter, which allows more construction work and encourages more shopping.

Oh noes! The weather is helping Obama!!!! I say we need to legislate the weather right away. In fact, I say mother nature - conveniently a woman - must submit to a vaginal probe before she can decide to be the wrong temperature.

Never mind that cold winters have their own seasonal jobs - like extra ski trainers and ski resort employees and more snow plow drivers, for example, and their own spending generators - like people who go skiing, or people who travel to warmer places during the winter. But hey, don't try and tell that to these RNC "economists." Also, just because the four warmest winters on record all occurred within roughly the last two decades (out of 117 years on record), doesn't mean there's global warming or anything.

Also, never mind that people don't just "go shopping" and eat out because it's nice outside. They have to first have the money to spend. Which more and more people do, thanks to the Obama recovery. There is also no construction without, you know, money for the construction, which more and more businesses have, thanks to the Obama recovery.

Of course Douglas Holtz Eakin - of the "John McCain created the blackberry" fame - is not the only Republi-nomist picking up on this dangerous conspiracy by Mother Nature with the Obama campaign.Wall Street's mouthpieces are at it too, wanting to create a damper on the economy.

I can't stop laughing. They have lost every other argument to drag down the economy and to put a negative spin on the Obama recovery, and they have now ended up at the weather! But who knows, maybe in order for Republicans to start helping on climate change, they need to first be convinced that climate change is helping Democrats!

Economy improves even with do nothing congress

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The Economic Conversation Fox News Doesn't Want To Have

by Leslie Rosenberg/Media Matters

After weeks of dismissing news that the economy is improving and downplaying concerns over income inequality, Fox News is now trying to pivot the conversation away from economic growth to focus on deficit reduction, even as economists continue to warn that doing so would be bad for the economy.

Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson and anchor Martha MacCallum argued that the debt "needs to be an issue" in the presidential election, and urged Republican candidates to make debt reduction "the issue" in the campaign. When guest Christopher Hahn argued that debt reduction could wait until the economy is on firmer ground before making our primary focus deficit reduction, MacCallum scoffed: "Oh please!"

 Economists warn that debt reduction should wait until the economic recovery is on firmer ground. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, explained that prioritizing the deficit now "makes no sense": There are no businesses that are going to hire additional workers because the government laid off school teachers or firefighters and we cut back spending on food stamps. Businesses hire more workers when they see more demand for their product. All of these actions that reduce the deficit, either on the spending or tax side, translate into less demand and therefore less employment. In short, those who want to cut the deficit now are lobbying for fewer jobs and higher unemployment. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has argued that a premature focus on deficits would be "counterproductive." This tactic of shifting the debate away from jobs and economic growth to fixate on debt is nothing new at Fox. In the spring of 2010, while economists were arguing that more needed to be done to reduce unemployment and help grow the economy, Fox News insisted that debt was "our number one issue." At the time, Krugman argued that "jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy." The effect of that hijacked debate was a credit downgrade that Fox News figures cheered. It's not just economists who say it's not time to shift attention away from economic growth. Voters overwhelmingly say that jobs and the economy should be the focus of this year's election, not the debt. Voters are also more likely to say that the economy is moving in the right direction, rather than the wrong direction; and they are more likely to say that the Republican Party is moving in the wrong direction. All of which could explain why Fox is trying to move the debate in a different direction.

Obama on ‘Trickle Down’ Economics: ‘It Doesn’t Work, It Has Never Worked’

from The only Adult in the room blog
http://blackwaterdog.wordpress.com/

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

In 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt gave his rousing “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where he called for new approaches to dealing with the problems the nation faced. President Obama visited Osawatomie today, and in his own speech — his first major economic speech since Occupy Wall Street protests began highlighting income inequality and corporate greed — Obama called for a new approach to addressing America’s current economic challenges.

In the process, Obama fired a shot across the bow of 30 years of conservative economic theory, a shot that was sorely needed but has been left in the chamber by Democratic presidents and political leaders, Obama included, far too often. Trickle down economics, the conservative theory embraced by Ronald Reagan and virtually every conservative since, “doesn’t work,” Obama declared. And even as conservatives have clung to the idea in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, “it has never worked,” Obama added:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

Watch it:

Obama is right. The trickle-down policies put in place since the Reagan administration haven’t brought prosperity to the middle- and working-classes; if anything, they have made prosperity an illusion for the vast majority of Americans who don’t directly benefit from them.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, primarily those passed by Republicans in 2001 and 2003, lowered rates for the richest Americans to historically low levels — but those cuts were followed by massive deficits and weak job growth, not the economic boom conservatives promised. Anti-regulatory policies helped lead to a predatory financial system that busted the housing market, nearly collapsed the financial industry, and threw America into a recession that largely spared — and even enriched — the nation’s wealthiest. At the same time, millions of lower- and middle-class Americans lost jobs, retirement funds, and any hope of economic prosperity in their lifetime. Under 30 years of trickle down policies, wage growth has stagnated even as CEO pay has boomed.

Unfortunately, Obama’s speech won’t be enough to make such policies disappear. Republicans continue to espouse the same ideas — loosening regulations and cutting taxes on the rich while slashing programs that benefit the working- and middle-classes — in their attempts to bring about recovery. If history is any indicator, however, those policies would again fail to boost job creation and economic growth. As Obama noted today, those policies don’t work, and they never have.

Can't Handle The Truth: Limbaugh Insults Caller For Being Right On Economy

From Media Matters:

Rush Limbaugh referred to a caller as a "tool" and a "mind-numbed robot" after the caller accurately stated facts about President Obama's jobs bill and the economic recovery. Limbaugh also drastically overstated the level of infrastructure spending in the original stimulus legislation.

EMBED

Limbaugh Falsely Claims Entire Stimulus Law Was Spent On Infrastructure

Limbaugh: "We Spent $787 Billion In 2009 For Roads, Bridges" And "Schools. And Now We Need Another $60 Billion?" From the November 7 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

CALLER: I am just sick of the irrelevance of Washington, the obstruction going on of the jobs bill. Everybody needs jobs. We need our roads and our schools fixed. They're falling apart. And the Republicans only care about protecting their millionaire campaign donors from a half-percentage-point tax increase instead of helping their own constituents. It doesn't make any sense at all. Why can't they just put politics down and do what's right for once?

LIMBAUGH: Well, because that's not how jobs are created. If it were, we wouldn't have unemployment. We spent $787 billion in 2009 for roads, bridges, whatever else you said there, schools. And now we need another 60 billion for it? You gotta wake up. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/7/11]

In Fact, Only About One-Eighth Of The Original Stimulus Was Devoted To Infrastructure Spending. According to ProPublica, which broke down stimulus spending by category and agency shortly after the bill was signed into law, just over $98 billion was devoted to "Transportation and Infrastructure." [ProPublica.org, 2/13/09]

Limbaugh Says Federal Spending "Is Not How Jobs Are Created"

Limbaugh Says It's "Impossible" For Federal Spending To Create Jobs: "That's Not How Jobs Are Created." From the show:

LIMBAUGH: Well, because that's not how jobs are created. If it were, we wouldn't have unemployment. We spent $787 billion in 2009 for roads, bridges, whatever else you said there, schools. And now we need another 60 billion? You gotta wake up. This is not how jobs are created. The Republicans are not standing in the way of the creation of jobs. Republicans are standing in the way of bloated government. They're standing in the way of more government growing, which takes away money from the private sector, which is where jobs are created.

CALLER: Rush, if there were any bills that were in Congress -- say George Bush wrote a jobs bill, and it happened to increase taxes on millionaires a half-percentage point to create 450,000 jobs, would you support that bill?

LIMBAUGH: No. Because there's no -- it's impossible. There's no federal spending that can create private-sector jobs. The only thing that can happen is public-sector union workers to be hired, DMV types and all that. People that work at the FDA. There is no way that government spending is going to increase hiring at any private-sector firms. It isn't possible. You cannot take money out of the private sector -- you just can't do -- and have people hired. It just doesn't work that way. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/7/11]

Economists Say Jobs Act Would Be A "Significant Boost" To Employment

Bloomberg: Economists Conclude Jobs Act Would "Help Avoid A Return To Recession."Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News concluded that the jobs plan "would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year." From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said. [Bloomberg, 9/28/10]

Zandi: American Jobs Act Would Add Nearly 2 Million Jobs. UPI reported: 

President Barack Obama's $447 billion job-creation plan would likely add 1.9 million payroll jobs and grow the U.S. economy 2 percent, a leading economist said. 

The plan, which Obama outlined before a joint session of Congress Thursday, would likely cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point, Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said as Obama prepared to tout the plan at Virginia's University of Richmond. [United Press International, 9/9/11] 

Macroeconomic Advisers: American Jobs Act Would Be "A Significant Boost To GDP And Employment." From the blog of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC:

We estimate that the American Jobs Act (AJA), if enacted, would give a significant boost to GDP and employment over the near-term.

• The various tax cuts aimed at raising workers' after-tax income and encouraging hiring and investing, combined with the spending increases aimed at maintaining state & local employment and funding infrastructure modernization, would:

• Boost the level of GDP by 1.3% by the end of 2012, and by 0.2% by the end of 2013.

• Raise nonfarm establishment employment by 1.3 million by the end of 2012 and 0.8 million by the end of 2013, relative to the baseline.

• The program works directly to raise employment through tax incentives and support to state & local governments for increasing hiring; it works indirectly through the positive boost to aggregate demand (and hence hiring) stimulated by the direct spending and the increase in household income resulting from lower employee payroll taxes and increased employment. [Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, 9/8/11]

EPI: American Jobs Act Would "Increase Employment By About 4.3 Million Jobs." Economic Policy Institute research and policy director John Irons provided a "preliminary breakdown of the package and a first pass look at the job impact" of Obama's jobs plan:

Overall the package would increase employment by about 4.3 million jobs over the next couple of years. The new initiatives would boost employment by about 2.6 million jobs, while the continuation of the two temporary provisions (EUI and the payroll tax holiday) would prevent a backslide of over 1.6 million jobs.

There's still a big hole left to fill, but every step matters.

Irons included the following graphic in his post:

[Economic Policy Institute, 9/8/11]

IHS Global Insight: American Jobs Act Could Grow GDP By 1.4 Percentage Points, Create 900,000 Jobs. From IHS Global Insight chief U.S. economist Nigel Gault's estimate of the American Jobs Act's impact:

Adding the different elements of the programme would generate a 2012 (calendar-year) impact on GDP growth--compared to our baseline--of about 0.8 percentage point. Passing none of the programme would cut about 0.6 percentage point off our projected growth rate. Thus, the overall swing in growth between not passing any of it and passing the whole thing would be about 1.4 percentage points. The corresponding swing for employment (also calendar-year average) would be around 900,000 (from down 400,000 to up 500,000). We will watch the debate over the proposals carefully, to see what parts of it the Republicans might go along with. Our expectation at this point is that not much beyond the extension of the existing payroll tax cut and the extension of emergency unemployment insurance benefits will be passed. For now, we have no plans to adjust our 2012 forecast based on the president's proposal. [IHS Global Insight, 9/12/11]

Ameriprise Financial Services Senior Economist: Obama Jobs Plan Could Add Up To 1.2 Million Jobs. CNNMoney reported:

Economists gave generally positive reviews to President Obama's jobs plan Friday, with some estimating that at least 1 million jobs could be added in the next year if Congress passes the package.

The payroll tax holiday for workers and small businesses was cited specifically for having a relatively good "bang for the buck." And that part of the plan may have the most bipartisan support.

"This additional spending capacity in the hands of consumers should continue to foster improvements in aggregate domestic demand. And ultimately, it is demand and demand alone that will lead to more business hiring," said Russell Price, senior economist for Ameriprise Financial Services.

Price estimates the increased payroll tax holiday for workers by itself is likely to add between 750,000 to 1 million jobs, and that the new break on payroll taxes for employers could add an additional 100,000 to 200,000 jobs.

He added that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic activity, could get a 1.5 percentage point boost as well. [CNNMoney.com, 9/9/11]

Nuveen Asset Management Chief Economist: American Jobs Act Could Add A Million Jobs.CNNMoney further reported:

Economists say one big problem with assessing the program is figuring out its chance of passage in the face of Republican criticism.

Keith Hembre, chief economist for Nuveen Asset Management, said he thinks the package could lift GDP by 1.5 percentage points and add 1 million jobs, but doubts Congress will approve Obama's proposal.

"It seems much more like a wish list than anything that is likely become law," he said. [CNNMoney.com, 9/9/11]

Limbaugh Tells Caller He Should Be "Embarrassed" After Accurately Describing Public- And Private-Sector Job Growth

Since July 2009, When Stimulus Began To Take Effect, Private-Sector Jobs Have Grown By Over 1.5 Million While Public Sector Jobs Have Fallen By Over 500,000. From PoliticalCorrection.org, a project of Media Matters Action Network:

[Click to enlarge]

[PoliticalCorrection.org, Media Matters Action Network, 11/4/11]

Presented With This Fact, Limbaugh Tells Caller "You're Just Flat-Out Wrong." From the show:

CALLER: Well, actually, the last few jobs reports, Rush, the private sector has created jobs in line with what's expected in an economic recovery. The real jobs losses have been in the public sector because of crushing budget cuts.

LIMBAUGH: You know --

CALLER: And all this bill is trying to do is to relieve some of that.

LIMBAUGH: If I were you, I would be embarrassed. You are such a tool. You are a mind-numbed robot programmed to spew a bunch of absolute garbage. Illogical garbage. You're just flat-out wrong -- embarrassingly so. Reading from a script. Incapable of critical thinking on your own. You're a sponge. And you're soaking up stuff from the wrong side. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/7/11]

Snyder’s First Six Months: Killing Michigan Jobs

I needz to be recall

From Michigan Democratic Party

LANSING – Six months into his tenure, Governor Rick Snyder has failed to sign one piece of legislation that helps to create jobs. After promising on the campaign trail and in his inaugural address to create jobs, Snyder’s policies have actually cost Michigan jobs.

“We’ve seen nothing from this Governor in six months except the elimination of jobs in Michigan.” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer said. “Whether it’s the repeal of item pricing, the cuts to film incentives, or his budget which is causing the layoffs of thousands of teachers, police, firefighters, and other public employees – Snyder has proven that all he knows how to do in office is kill jobs.”

“Just this past week we’ve seen even more jobs leave the state,” added Brewer. “A solar technology company in Brighton is leaving Michigan and taking jobs to Indiana. It joins several other companies who have left Michigan or created jobs elsewhere since Snyder became Governor. In six months, Snyder has broken his promise to create jobs. That’s not ‘reinventing’ Michigan. That’s ruining Michigan.”

Motor City Liberal Comment: What's that sound coming from the Michigan right wing blog sphere? It's the sound of crickets because they can't defend ONE damn thing this governor and that corrupt Republican super majority in Lansing are doing. 

Conservative Media Pick Theme For GOP's 2012 Campaign: Obama "Made [The Economy] Worse"

From Media Matters

Right-wing media have seized on a line from a Peggy Noonan column -- "he made it worse" -- and have begun repeating the false message that President Obama's policies have worsened the economy. In reality, there is broad agreement among economists that the stimulus boosted growth and employment, and most of the deficit is attributable to Bush policies and the recession.

Noonan: "Four Words: He Made It Worse"

Noonan: Obama Decisions Worsened "Financial Collapse, Deficits, and Debt." From Peggy Noonan's June 3 column in The Wall Street Journal:

Barack Obama is different, not a political practitioner, really, but something else, and not a warm-blooded animal but a cool, chill character, a fish who sits deep in the tank and stares, stilly, at the other fish.

He doesn't know how to confuse his foes with "outreach," with phone calls, jokes, affection. He doesn't leave them saying, as Reagan did, "I just can't help it, I like the guy." And because he can't confuse them or reach them they more readily coalesce around their own explanation of him: socialist, destroyer.

This isn't good, and has had an impact on the president's contacts with Republicans. And it's added an edge to an emerging campaign theme among them. Two years ago I wrote of Clare Booth Luce's observation that all presidents have a sentence: "He fought to hold the union together and end slavery." "He brought America through economic collapse and a world war." You didn't have to be told it was Lincoln, or FDR. I said that Mr. Obama didn't understand his sentence. But Republicans now think they know it.

Four words: He made it worse.

Obama inherited financial collapse, deficits and debt. He inherited a broken political culture. These things weren't his fault. But through his decisions, he made them all worse. [The Wall Street Journal, 6/3/11]

National Review: Noonan "Finds The Campaign Theme"

National Review's Ponnuru Titles Blog Post "Peggy Noonan Finds The Campaign Theme." The day Noonan's column was published, National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru posted an entry to the National Review Online blog The Corner that excerpted from the column and declared that she had found the campaign theme. [National Review Online, The Corner, 6/3/11]

Fox Figures Hammer Home False Message That Obama "Made It Worse"

Doocy Touts Noonan's Claim In "Great Editorial": "It Comes Down To Four Words: 'He Made It Worse.' " From the June 6 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

STEVE DOOCY (co-host): You know what, Gretch? There was a great editorial by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend. And what she --

BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): From Massapequa. But go ahead.

DOOCY: That's right. Her sister lives in my town.

KILMEADE: But I deserve credit for that somehow.

DOOCY: Anyway, what she wrote was, you know, the president does have a lousy economy on his hands right now, and it was lousy when he took over. But he was able to make a bunch of decisions on which way to turn the ship. And she says the decisions he made got us where we are today. And she says it comes down to four words: "He made it worse." And when you think about it, we had all those different arsenal tools in Ben Bernanke's toolbox. We did what the president wanted. He made it worse, according to Peggy Noonan. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/6/11]

Charles Krauthammer: "I Think You Can Argue Strongly That The Obama Administration Made It Worse." From the June 7 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier:

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, I don't think it's a communication problem. This is not Cool Hand Luke. This is a reality problem. No matter what Obama said, no matter how he spun it. If he used the phrase "a bump in the road" or a blip or whatever, it wouldn't make any difference in the world. It's the fact that we have historically high unemployment, and it is staying there.

With Reagan, you had a really deep recession like the one that we have just had, but we had this remarkable snap back. We had 6, 7 percent growth. Even though he had high unemployment on Election Day in 1984, everybody had a sense that we were in recovery, and you could, with a straight face, run an ad saying, "It's morning in America." You can't now. It's dusk in America. It's evening in America. It's midnight in America. But it's not morning in America. That's why no matter what he says, it's not going to make any difference.

And I think you can argue strongly that the Obama administration made it worse. In the midterm election last year, the idea that Republicans ran on was that he's a left liberal. What they're going to run on in 2012 is he's a failure. He tried all of this stuff. He promised us we'd get improvement, and it hasn't worked. It was a huge Keynesian experiment, and it hasn't panned out. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 6/7/11]

Bill O'Reilly: To Say "Obama Administration Has Not Made" Economy Worse Is "To Just Ignore The Statistics." From the June 7 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: Here's the problem with that, with your analysis. The private sector is sitting on a tremendous amount of money, a trillion dollars, easy. OK? The banks aren't lending it. They're not giving it out. You go to a bank, very hard to get a mortgage, very hard to start up a business. The reason is they don't have any confidence in Barack Obama. Because he's breaking the bank with the entitlement spending. Now, that includes Medicare, that includes Medicaid and all of that. The banks are going, "You know what? We don't have confidence in this guy. We think it's a nanny state coming, and if he gets re-elected, it's going to be worse." So they're sitting on the money.

ALAN COLMES (Fox News Radio host): How do you know it's about Obama versus the economy? Why is this specific to Obama, if the economy has not done well because the Republicans drove it into the --

O'REILLY: Because he's driving the policy.

COLMES: Thank God we had the stimulus we had and helped save the auto industry. And we need a bigger stimulus.

O'REILLY: You're missing the point. If a Republican says, "I'm going to cut taxes," instead of Obama saying, "I'm going to raise them," the economy -- the private sector is going to cheer that.

COLMES: It didn't work for Bush. Where were the jobs? Bush cut the -- we paid the --

O'REILLY: You just heard Schieffer say 5 percent versus 9 percent.

COLMES: You know why? Because it's where we're coming from. We're coming off a terrible recession, and so right now, 8 percent looks really good.

O'REILLY: The Obama administration's made all of it worse.

COLMES: No, they didn't make it worse.

O'REILLY: Yes, they did.

COLMES: They would have made it better if we had a bigger stimulus.

O'REILLY: They would have. They would have.

COLMES: And imagine what the Republicans would be saying if the auto industry were not saved and hundreds of thousands of jobs were gone. They'd be going crazy. They'd be going crazy.

O'REILLY: I was OK with the auto industry, but for you to sit there and say the Obama administration has not made it worse --

COLMES: They made it better.

O'REILLY: -- is for you to just ignore the statistics. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 6/7/11]

Monica Crowley: "Barack Obama Took A Bad Situation And Made It A Thousand Times Worse." From the June 7 edition of The O'Reilly Factor:

CROWLEY: In the fall of 2008, you had a financial crisis. That crisis then spread like a contagion to other aspects of the economy. Barack Obama took a bad situation and made it a thousand times worse with a massive expansion of government, with unprecedented spending -- as you point out -- record-breaking deficits and debt, which hangs like a suffocating overhang over this economy. And then regulations, new requirements like ObamaCare, where businesses -- small, medium, and large -- have no idea what it's going to cost them to hire an employee tomorrow.

O'REILLY: That's right. She's right. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 6/7/11]

Analyses Agree: Stimulus Curbed Unemployment And Boosted Growth, And Most Debt Is Attributable to Bush Policies And Economic Downturn

Independent And Private Analysts: Stimulus Significantly Raised Employment. As Media Mattershas previously documented, many analysts confirmed that the stimulus significantly raised employment. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the stimulus increased the number of people employed, as of the second quarter of FY2010, by "between 1.4 million and 3.3 million." Moody's Economy.com estimated it would have created 1.9 million jobs by 2010. [Media Matters,9/26/10]

Economists: "The Effects Of The Fiscal Stimulus" On Economy "Appear Very Substantial."Economists also agreed that the stimulus was effective. A March 2010 study in The Wall Street Journalfound that 70 percent of economists surveyed said the stimulus "boosted growth and mitigated job losses." ABC News reported on February 18, 2010, that most of the economists on its panel thought the economy "would be worse today without the big aid package." And a February 2010 survey of 203 members of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) found that "[e]ighty-three percent believe that GDP is currently higher than it would have been without the 2009 stimulus package (ARRA)." [Media Matters, 9/26/10]

Wash. Post Graphic Shows Bush Tax Cuts And Iraq Wars Contributed Most To Current Deficit.From a June 4 post on The Washington Post blog PostPolitics:

In the debate over the nation's rising debt, rhetoric trumps reality. In January 2001, the U.S. budget was balanced for the first time in decades and the Congressional Budget Office was forecasting surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion by 2011. A decade later, the national debt is larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any time in U.S. history except for the period shortly after World War II.

[...]

In fact, 75 percent of the members currently serving in Congress voted for at least one -- and in most cases more than one -- of three policies that contributed to fully one-third of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt: President George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and President Obama's 2009 stimulus bill.

The post also included the following graphic illustrating the CBO's estimates on how much Bush's tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 2009 stimulus contributed to the current debt:

[The Washington Post, 6/4/11]

CBPP: "[V]irtually The Entire Deficit Over The Next Ten Years" Due To Bush Policies, Economic Downturn." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) published an analysis of federal deficits in December 2009, which was updated on June 28, 2010, titled, "Critics Still Wrong on What's Driving Deficits in Coming Years: Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers." The report noted:

Some critics continue to assert that President George W. Bush's policies bear little responsibility for the deficits the nation faces over the coming decade -- that, instead, the new policies of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress are to blame.  Most recently, a Heritage Foundation paper downplayed the role of Bush-era policies (for more on that paper, see p. 4).  Nevertheless, the fact remains: Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

The report also graphed the effects of Bush's policies and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the deficit. From the report: