Obama’s Concerns About Economy –Just PoliticalTalk

by Don Azarias
July 16, 2011
Once a politician, always a politician. Like almost all of those political leaders in Washington, D.C., that’s how I’ll describe President Barack Obama. And, of course, that’s the reason why he was elected president of the United States. Oratorically gifted whose speaking style is enhanced with the help of the  teleprompter, he became an overnight sensation after his electrifying speech as the keynote speaker during Sen. John Kerry’s televised presidential campaign in 2004.
 
As a junior senator from Illinois with an unremarkable voting record in the U.S. Senate, he became an accidental celebrity. He was the darling of the liberal media that treated him with kid gloves and helped catapult him to the highest office of the greatest nation on the face of the earth. With the help of the liberal media, he was able to defeat his GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam POW and a true American hero. Those who voted for Obama were hopeful that he had enough talent and ability to back up those lofty promises that he made to the American people during his campaign. Moreover, he coined the words “change we can believe in” to be his campaign slogan. Now it’s becoming apparent that his “flaws” outnumber his “gifts”.
 
After almost four years of Obama’s administration, the state of the U.S. economy remains unchanged and virtually the same or even worse. With the 2012 presidential elections looming on the horizon, unemployment is currently at 9.1 percent. When Obama took office, it was 7.8 percent. And with a few options left for him and his poll numbers taking a nosedive, Obama is expressing concern about the current economic condition but telling the American public that it should “not panic.” He tried to reassure Americans worried about high unemployment and expensive gas that the nation is on a slow, if not steady, path to recovery. In a recent public appearance, Obama had this to say, “I am concerned about the fact that the recovery that we’re on is not producing jobs as quickly as I want it to happen. We don’t yet know whether this is a one-month episode or a longer trend.”
 
Come to think of it, I have this question to ask: Is he really showing genuine concern for the stubborn economic recession or is he only taking that position because he is hell-bent on winning a second term come 2012? So desperate was Obama that he just recently announced his administration’s plan to cut expenses in order to reduce waste and inefficiency in the government. But, Mr. President, isn’t that’s what the Republicans have been asking you to do and that’s also the reason for the stalemate on Capitol Hill?  
 
The president knows that he and his Democratic Party are answerable to the American voters for the economic slowdown. It will surely be a political issue that will weigh heavily on his own re-election prospects. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News survey, the American public’s disapproval of Obama’s handling of the economy has reached a record high, 59 percent. The poll also found that, if elections are held today, Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are tied among all American voters. However, it gave Romney a slight edge, less than the margin of error, among registered voters.
 
For the readers’ information, when the recession began in December, 2007, there were 7.7 people who are unemployed. According to the latest Labor Department report, there were 13.9 million people who are unemployed as of June 3, 2011.
 
Election records show that no president since World War II has won a second term with a jobless rate above 7.2 percent, and Obama’s options for achieving faster economic growth before the November 2012 election appear limited.
 
On the Republican side, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), recalled the administration’s promise that unemployment would go no higher than 8 percent after Obama pumped billions of dollars into the economy soon after taking office. Kinzinger said, “the road to refueling our economy and creating jobs includes tackling government debt, simplifying tax laws, limiting regulations, passing free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and boosting domestic energy production. These are some of the steps we need to take to get government out of the way and let our economy grow and get back to producing jobs.” 
 
At a speech he recently delivered in Atlanta, Bernanke stuck to his assertion that the economy’s toughest challenges, notably high gas prices that have squeezed family budgets, are probably temporary. He noted that households are struggling with higher food and energy prices, falling home prices, tighter lending rules and high unemployment.
 
If the economic growth stopped completely, there are more drastic steps the Fed and Congress could take to forestall a second recession, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Among those options, he said, would be extending this year’s Social Security tax cut, which is giving most households $1,000 to $2,000, extending unemployment insurance and extending a business tax break for investment.
 
Once again, Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill could turn to the “bandage solution”, to temporarily fix the economy. That’s what Obama’s “change we can believe in” is all about. That would also involve some window-dressing to make himself and his Democratic allies look good in the eyes of the ever-gullible American voters who always seem to be afflicted with short-term memory loss on election day.