Henry Payne for April 29, 2016

As recently as February 2014, 2016 White House hopeful and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio declared:. If you recall five years ago, the notion was that if the government spent all this money—that, by the way, was borrowed—that somehow the economy would begin to grow and create jobs. Well, of course, it clearly failed..Not according to the overwhelming consensus of economists, including the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). At its peak in 2010, CBO concluded, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act added up to 3.3 million jobs, cut unemployment by as much as 1.8 percent and boosted GDP by up to 4.1 percent. (It’s also worth pointing out that the CBO repeatedly confirmed that aid to the states and purchases by the federal government delivers the biggest bang for the buck, while upper-income tax cuts provide the least.) As the Washington Post reported in June 2012, the House Budget Committee heard testimony from CBO chief Douglas Elmendorf and demanded his answer to a simple question: Did the $787 billion Obama stimulus work? Unfortunately for Republican propagandists, Elmendorf clearly refuted Mitt Romney’s claim that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was “the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history.”.The tragedy is that what might be called the Obama Economic Miracle could have been even more miraculous if Republicans on Capitol Hill and in state and local governments hadn’t stood in his way. DC Republicans didn’t just block Obama initiatives like the American Jobs Act and infrastructure investment that could have boosted employment when unemployment was mired at 9 percent. They didn’t just strangle job creation and consumer confidence with their debt-ceiling hostage-taking. The destructive austerity policies of state and local governments created an “anti-stimulus,” with layoffs of public sector workers and cuts to spending that only served to undermine the gains from ARRA (see the second chart above). By May 2013, the Hamilton Project estimated those austerity policies cost 2.2 American million jobs and resulted in the slowest recovery since World War II. In April 2012, the Economic Policy Institute explained:. The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months…If public-sector employment had grown since June 2009 by the average amount it grew in the three previous recoveries (2.8 percent) instead of shrinking by 2.5 percent, there would be 1.2 million more public-sector jobs in the U.S. economy today. In addition, these extra public-sector jobs would have helped preserve about 500,000 private-sector jobs...http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1/11/1356534/-Democrats-saved-the-economy-Republicans-tried-to-kill-it

Remember when we were losing 250,000 jobs a month under W?

Payne and his right wing propaganda.

Payne seldom reflects reality!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2009/jan/wk2/art02.htm): “In December, the number of unemployed persons increased by 632,000 to 11.1 million and the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent.” This was for December, 2008.

From the same source, in a news release on April 1, 2016: “In March, the unemployment rate (5.0 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (8.0 million) were little changed.”

Only in your world is 8.0 million more than 11.1 million.

I suspect few of the right-wing commenters have ever attempted any study of economics. If you are interested, attempt to read the book titled “Austerity” by Mark Blyth. You will see how wrong-headed austerity is and always has been. The obstructionist Congress has prevented almost every useful attempt to improve the economy.Congress blames the President for the inaction and has made innumerable efforts to eliminate executive powers of the President. Fortunately, the combined idiots have no plan of their own so we have at least made some progress.

What Fantasy Land does Payne inhabit?

Henry Payne is Trump,with a pen.

U.S. GDP 2007-2015.Dec 31, 2015 – 16.47 trillionDec 31, 2014 – 16.15 trillionDec 31, 2013 – 15.76 trillionDec 31, 2012 – 15.38 trillionDec 31, 2011 – 15.19 trillionDec 31, 2010 – 14.94 trillionDec 31, 2009 – 14.54 trillionDec 31, 2008 – 14.58 trillionDec 31, 2007 – 14.99 trillion