Gov. Mitch Daniels, who continues to attract GOP VP speculation, appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. He was asked, very bluntly by Wallace, (except of course he frames it as 'the Obama argument') how going back to George Bush's trickle down, tax cuts for the rich policies could result in anything but more of the same, i.e. really bad news.
The answer is hardly surprising coming from a Republican. Sure, President Obama got a pretty raw deal but you know who had a worse mess when they entered office? If you guessed Ronald Reagan, you would be right of course.
The all purpose answer to anything and everything GOP. Ronald Reagan!
From the interview on Fox News Sunday with Gov. Mitch Daniels:
WALLACE: Well, let me pick up on that, though. What about the Obama argument that he inherited a mess from George W. Bush, and that if Romney gets in to office and enacts the policies he's espousing, that he will simply return us to that mess?
Governor Romney has endorsed Paul Ryan's budget. In principle, Ryan cuts tax rates for the rich without specifying which loopholes he would close. Ryan cuts nondefense discretionary spending by 19 percent in 2014, which the Obama campaign says would mean major cuts in Head Start, medical research and healthcare for the poor.
So, how about the Obama argument, what Romney will do is give tax cuts to the rich and spending cuts to the poor and the middle class?
DANIELS: First of all, the president did inherit a mess but it's not the first time it's ever happened. He's done less with the mess than anyone else ever did. Ronald Reagan inherited a bigger one and had a roaring economy already by this stage.
Whoa, let's stop right there. What a full of fail, full of lies package in two little sentences. It's not the 'first time' it's ever happened. True. There was that Great Depression thing. Which was created under a Republican administration and the country crawled out of with a Democratic president. So it's only been about 70 years or so since it happened before.
Ronald Reagan inherited a 'bigger mess'? Really? That's the new GOP talking point? Even if that were remotely true, that hardly discounts everything President Obama has done to get the economy going. Not to mention against historic intransigence from the opposition party. And the economy was 'roaring three years into his presidency?
How bad was the recession Reagan inherited?
The early 1980s recession was a severe recession in the United States which began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982
It didn't start until months into Reagan's first term.
According to Bloomberg News, who know a thing or two about the economy, the recession of 2009 is the worst on record since WWII.
Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.
The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said yesterday in Washington. Gross domestic product has shrunk 3.9 percent in the past year, the report said, indicating the worst slump since the Great Depression.
“The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week. The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said.
And what about those terrible unemployment rates Reagan inherited, and how the economy was 'roaring' by year three. What was the unemployment rate when Reagan took office in January 1981? It was 7.5 percent. During the course of his first term the unemployment rate continued to climb, to double digits - 10.4 in January 1984. And by the end of his first term, December 1984, he had gotten it back down - all the way 7.3%, where he essentially started.
And Daniels continues on with his lies:
This is the weakest recovery, at least in the post-war period, if not ever, given the depth of the recession that we were in. With regard to how we get out of it, you can start by saying we couldn't do worse than the policy mix of this president -- gigantic new spending, gigantic new taxes, a takeover of 18 percent or 19 percent of the economy in the Obamacare bill. Anything would be better than that.
Wait, what? 'Given the depth of the recession that we were in' ? So, it was a really bad recession? Sure, 'gigantic' new spending. That is how you stimulate the economy, and it wasn't the trillion plus that really would have made a difference. Gigantic nex taxes? Really? Please see the 17 new small business tax cuts President Obama signed into law, including the
JOBS Act just two weeks ago. Takeover of 18 percent of the economy, sure, whatever. As if the government participating in the economy is somehow detrimental to the economy.
DANIELS: But you know, the president -- apparently, nothing in his life has acquainted him with where jobs and wealth come from. He has no ear at all for the small business of this country. They're the ones on the receiving end of all of his new taxes. And, you know, frankly, I guess he never is going to get it.
You know, our state happens to be one where the workforce is growing, but all around us there are states, Chris, where people have simply given up looking for work. Everyone now knows if we had the same size workforce we had when this all started, unemployment as reported would be 11 percent. Not 8.x.
So, you know, this is still a very tough slog in most of America. And honestly, I can't name one thing that this administration has done that hasn't leaned against jobs and against growth. So, to that extent -- to the extent national policy has an affect, it's not really a surprise.
Of course you can't.
Noun verb Ronald Reagan.
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