|
Townhall...
Obama Tunes Out, and
Business Goes on Hiring Strike
By Michael Barone
6/6/2011
Last week, I noted that various forms of the word “unexpected” almost
inevitably appeared in news stories about unfavorable economic
developments.
You can find them again in stories about Friday’s shocking news, that
only 54,000 net new jobs were created in the month of May and that
unemployment rose to 9.1 percent.
But with news that bad, maybe bad economic numbers will no longer be
“unexpected.” You can only expect a robust economic recovery for so
long before you figure out, as Herbert Hoover eventually did, that it
is not around the corner.
Exogenous factors explain some part of the current economic stagnation.
The earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused a slowdown in manufacturing.
Horrendous tornados did not help. Nor did bad weather, though only a
few still bitterly cling to the theory that it’s caused by manmade
global warming.
But poor public policy is surely one reason why the American economy
has not rebounded from recession as it has in the past. And political
posturing has also played a major role.
Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities of
2009-10 raised federal spending from 21 percent to 25 percent of gross
domestic product. Their stimulus package stopped layoffs of public
employees for a while, even as private sector payrolls plummeted.
|
|
|
|
