Obamanomics: The Results Are In

 Posted 06:56 PM ET

Job seekers wait in line at a construction job fair in New York on Aug. 21, 2012.  View Enlarged Image

If President Obama had run in 2008 promising to cut family incomes, shove more people into poverty, create greater inequality and make people more dependent on the federal government — and that black Americans would fare worse than everyone else — would he have won that election?

Well, the latest Census Bureau report shows that these are precisely the results Obama has delivered since taking office.

According to that report, median annual household income dropped by more than $2,000 in real terms since 2009, a 4.1% decline. Blacks fared even worse, watching their incomes fall 5.7% between 2009 and 2011.

And despite more than three full years of economic recovery, nearly 2.7 million more people are languishing in poverty than in 2009. The current 15% poverty rate is well above where it stood in Obama's first year in office — 14.3%.

Here, too, blacks have fared worse, with the black poverty rate now at 27.6%, up from 25.8% in 2009. And while the number of whites in poverty dropped slightly in 2011, it continued to climb among blacks, the census data show.

Despite Obama's repeated promises to grow the economy from the "bottom up," his policies have managed to widen the gap between rich and poor.

In 2011, the so-called Gini Index of Income Inequality climbed 1.6%, marking "the first time the Gini index has shown an annual increase since 1993."

Democrats have long complained — falsely — that GOP policies made the rich richer and poor poorer. But under Obama, it's actually happening.

Last year, families in the bottom 20% saw their average income drop almost 1%; incomes for those in the middle 20% fell 1.7%. But those in the top 20% saw their average income climb nearly 2%.

This isn't some sort of indictment of "trickle down" economics. It just shows that government spending can't generate prosperity for the middle class.

And it shows that when your policies choke off what should have been a solid economic recovery, the only ones who benefit are those already at the top.

Then there's the increase in government dependency under Obama.

According to the census report, there's been a strong shift under Obama away from employer-provided insurance and toward government insurance.

Between 2009 and 2011, the number of people who get insurance coverage through work dropped by more than 600,000, driving the share of people covered at work down to 55%.

At the same time, the number on government health insurance plans climbed by 6.3 million — with almost a third of Americans (32.2%) now getting coverage from Medicaid, Medicare or through military health care plans.

Almost half of the growth under Obama was the result of the explosion in Medicaid enrollment.

And the ranks of those under 65 on Medicare has climbed by more than a million, mostly due to the explosion in the number of people on Social Security's disability program, who qualify for Medicare coverage after two years.

This tracks other measures of dependency: food stamp enrollment is up 46% since Obama took office; disability enrollment is up 18%; direct federal payments to individuals is up 21% since Bush's last year.

You might try to blame these lousy numbers on the recession that started under Bush.

Except for the fact that the recession ended five months after Obama took office, and all these dire results occurred during Obama's "recovery," when his policies were in full effect.

Any wonder President Obama wants this to be a "choice" election, rather than a referendum on his record?

Going Investors Business Daily One Better

By CHQ Staff | 9/13/12

Is there any way to define Obama’s record better than the editorial writers of Investors Business Daily did in this editorial?

If President Obama had run in 2008 promising to cut family incomes, shove more people into poverty, create greater inequality and make people more dependent on the federal government — and that black Americans would fare worse than everyone else — would he have won that election?

Much as we love how they put what Obamanomics has done to the family incomes of working Americans, we think we can go IBD one better by adding one more item to the last line in that paragraph, “and spend something like $8 trillion dollars doing it – would he have won the election?”

As IBD pointed out, the latest Census Bureau report shows that Obamanomics has been particularly hard on minorities and lower-income Americans.

What’s more, IBD’s analysis of this Census data shows, “Despite Obama's repeated promises to grow the economy from the ‘bottom up,’ his policies have managed to widen the gap between rich and poor… Democrats have long complained — falsely — that GOP policies made the rich richer and poor poorer. But under Obama, it's actually happening.”

If there was ever an undeniable rebuttal of Obama's Keynesian economic policies, this Census report, and IBD’s analysis of it is it. But that is only part of the story.

Between the first two “quantitative easing” or QE1 and QE2 programs, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has put something close to $2 trillion into Obama’s reelection effort by purchasing mortgage backed securities (MBS’s) and longer term Treasury securities.

The Fed actions, we should note, were on top of the $700 billion Bush/Paulson TARP program and the outrageous $865 billion Obama-Pelosi-Reid 2009 stimulus bill and better than $5 trillion in deficit spending by the federal government over Obama’s term in office.

And now the Federal Reserve is set to announce another round of “quantitative easing” or QE3 program that, between the Fed’s actions and Obama’s deficits, could run total Keynesian spending to $8 trillion dollars.

As the writers at IBD pointed out, the recession ended five months after Obama took office, and all these dire results occurred during Obama's "recovery," when his policies were in full effect.

At some point, the Fed and Obama administration are going to have to take ownership of the results of all this stimulus spending and inflation. Here’s what those results are according to IBD’s analysis of the latest Census data: the weakest economic recovery in the post-war era, an economic disaster for America’s working families from which many will never recover AND $8 trillion in debt to show for it.