Steve Rattner “served as lead adviser to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry in 2009 for the Obama administration.” This morning, the racist NYTimes published Rattner’s op-ed, which is simply a continuation of President Obama’s attempt to lie about the success of President Obama’s economic policies.
In President Obama’s attempt to spin his policies, he’s either forced to lying outright or he’s too unwilling to admit that his policies failed. Prior to serving in the Obama administration, Rattner “was a managing principal of the Quadrangle Group, a private equity investment firm that specialized in the media and communications industries. Prior to co-founding Quadrangle, he was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and Lazard Freres & Co., where he rose to deputy chairman and deputy chief executive officer.” But I digress.
In his op-ed, Rattner wrote that “For the second consecutive Friday, the Trump administration had an opportunity to point to fresh data that supposedly demonstrates the strong boost the president’s policies have given to the nation’s economy. Last week, news that the gross domestic product expanded at a 4.1 percent rate in the second quarter occasioned a presidential appearance on the south lawn of the White House. Friday’s announcement that 157,000 new jobs were added in July was marked more modestly, with a statement from the White House.”
Let’s be clear about something. There’s no disputing the fact that the economy is stronger than it was during the Obama administration. The energy sector is booming. Manufacturing is the strongest it’s been in a generation. Unemployment in minority communities is the lowest it’s been in history. Literally trillions of dollars are flooding into the United States now that the Obama tax disaster has been repealed and replaced with the Trump/GOP tax cuts. Business investments are increasing nicely.
Yes, the economy is continuing to expand nicely, which all Americans should celebrate. But no, there’s nothing remarkable in the overall results since Mr. Trump took office. Most importantly, there is little evidence that the president’s policies have meaningfully improved the fortunes of those “forgotten” Americans who elected him.
Nancy Pelosi called the tax cuts “crumbs.”
This is Rattner’s more elegant way of saying that the Trump economy is delivering crumbs to the American people. Tell that to these people:
According to the workers at Granite City Works, President Trump’s policies aren’t just providing jobs after the plant was idled on President Obama’s watch. It’s that those workers said that Granite City, IL is getting rebuilt one neighborhood, one family at a time.
Yes, Mr. Rattner, there were far too many people forgotten by President Obama’s policies. If you weren’t part of the well-connected crowd, you didn’t share in the prosperity. If you didn’t work in one of the industries that President Obama picked as a winner, you were in tough shape. Those forgotten workers aren’t forgotten anymore.
The dishonesty of people like Mr. Rattner and other Obama administration spinmeisters is disgusting. President Obama himself said that he planned on shutting down the coal industry. President Obama said that tons of jobs weren’t coming back. He’s right in once sense. Those jobs wouldn’t have come back with his disastrous tax and regulatory policies. Now that those policies have been replaced by pro-growth economic policies, things have gotten consistently better.
As a result, consumer confidence is sky-high and the economy is robust again. How do I know? I know by the amount of traffic on the highways heading out on vacation. This Friday, the traffic on Highway 10 (at 11:00 am, I might add) was bumper-to-bumper. I never saw that during the Obama administration.
That’s because people have money in their pockets to spend again. The behavior of the American people is dramatically different. That’s reflected in the consumer confidence numbers.
No amount of Obama administration spin will change that.
So, Gary, great economy? Are you better off now than in 1999? Earning more? Living better? If there is this great economy going down; where is it? I have no great love for stagnant wages. I’d rather see people better off.
That’s an irrelevant question. Yes, we’re far better off than we were 5 years ago or 2.5 years ago.
As for where this great economy is, you don’t have to look far. It’s found where there’s manufacturing plants, energy jobs, small businesses & where capital is returning from sitting overseas. PS- that capital is returning thanks to the corporate tax cut. If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, cut taxes & regulations.
Obama and his allies claim that the economy during the previous administration was good. At best it was mediocre, but better than the economy in 2008 when the markets crashed.
One of the reasons why the economy recovered was the boom in shale oil drilling with the advancement of fracking methods. However, Obama, being a slave master to the environmental leftists, did not bat an eye when putting in new regulations on pipelines, and fracking, and whatever would be good for the oil industry. Oil was bad; and Obama was a saint. Hence the down turn in the energy sector of the economy in the last years of Obama. He did not appear to care about the high unemployment rate for minorities, all the while accusing his political opponents of racism.
Gretchen, you’ve totally nailed it. He created the forgotten people that voted for Trump.
If you’re not doing and living better than you were in 1999, maybe you need to take a long hard look in the mirror and see what you are doing wrong. People are quitting jobs and getting better paying ones every day. This is the America I remember before the community organizer told us those days were gone and we should get used to high unemployment.