And here’s an explanation of the chart (emphasis mine):
From December 2007 to July 2009 – the last year of the Bush second term and the first six months of the Obama presidency, before his policies could affect the economy – private sector employment crashed from 115,574,000 jobs to 107,778,000 jobs. Employment continued to fall, however, for the next six months, reaching a low of 107,107,000 jobs in December of 2009. So, out of 8,467,000 private sector jobs lost in this dismal cycle, 7,796,000 of those jobs or 92 percent were lost on the Republicans’ watch or under the sway of their policies. Some 671,000 additional jobs were lost as the stimulus and other moves by the administration kicked in, but 630,000 jobs then came back in the following six months. The tally, to date: Mr. Obama can be held accountable for the net loss of 41,000 jobs (671,000 – 630,000), while the Republicans should be held responsible for the net losses of 7,796,000 jobs.
Chart courtesy of Ezra Klein.
Oh, so the stimulus was just supposed to stop the hemorrhaging and not really create any new jobs as the proponents proclaimed?
Actually the stimulus did create some jobs but there were two mistakes the obama administration had.
1. They underestimated how bad the economy was under bush
2. Trying to work in a bipartisan manor, the stimulus had too many tax cuts.
You’re going for comic relief here, right? Because that’s laugh out loud funny. What, like 3 Republicans voted for the stimulus between both houses. Talk about revisionist history PP. Seriously, the problem with the stimulus was it was too bipartisan and all the Republican’s fault? That steaming pile was all the Democrats’.
And the problem with tax cuts is… ?
Come on Locke you know as well as I do, that Obama tried to get Republican support, so he added what they told him they would need and then they still voted against it. They have no interest in working with obama only obstructing.
The problem with tax cuts, unless targeted specifically to the middle class or to create jobs, they dont.
Libs say the stimulus wasn’t big enough. Maybe the tax cuts weren’t big enough. Now they want to raise them. How will raising taxes help stimulate the economy? Oh yeah, it won’t.
Yeah, like they worked with the Republicans on the health care bill, right? What baloney. When they won all those seats in the last congressional elections, they took total control and needed no votes from the Republicans to do whatever they want. With control of the White House and both houses of Congress, blaming the Republicans (who can barely stop tripping over themselves) is just plain silly.
Keeping the Bush tax cuts may or may not stimulate the economy…they haven’t proven much good so far. But letting them expire would help your other nagging issue: deficit reduction.
Not necessarily. By taking more money out of the system through tax hikes, that money fails to possibly generate more (and thus more tax revenues) in the private sector.
They did give massive tax breaks to the rich and corporations….see chart above to see how well that worked.
Tax cuts result in job losses? How does that work?!
Unfortunately, and you know this, they did work with Republicans on it(ever hear of chuck grassley?) and that is why it is health insurance reform and fairly vanilla not true health care reform. Thanks for that great example.