A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of voters now say the country’s economic problems are caused more by the policies Obama has put in place. That’s a 12-point jump from a month ago.
Fifty-four percent (54%) still say the country’s economic woes are due to the recession Obama inherited from President Bush. That figure is down eight points from 62% from early June.
So, by July or August it will be the Obama economy. That seems reasonable enough. After about six months, Obama should certainly share responsibility for the economic situation. Nevertheless, I hope Americans realize how much worse things could have been, and that it can take a long time to turn around a recession of this magnitude.
Of course, what’s more important, at least politically speaking, is the state of the economy in November 2010. It will be the Obama economy starting in a month or two — but that could either be a good thing or a bad thing for Democrats, depending on the trajectory of the Obama economy over the next year.
I realize it’s always fun to blame the head honcho, and in that way we’re quickly turning into Europe.
But, when does Congress get its share of criticism? After all, spending bills start with them. The political donations go to them too from the companies which eventually imploded.
I don’t completely blame Bush, I don’t completely blame Obama. Why doesn’t Congress get some of this ownership talk?
Wow, I have to commend you for being reasonable in accepting that blaming Bush cannot be an indefinite strategy of the Dems. I think the real test will be how the stimulus package that is entirely the result of Obama and the Democratic Congress will be judged in the fall. How are they going to measure the success of failure of almost $1 trillion dollars of spending? It will be very easy if things aren’t going well to point fingers back to an inherited economy.
Why not blame Bush forever? Hell the Republicans were blaming Clinton until December of 2008. If they can make up crap endlessly why their leadership didn’t drag our economy into the mud why can’t Democrats do the same?
-1.
Because Clinton left us with a surpluss, and a decent economy. If Bush hadn’t crashed the economy, and left us with a huge deficit, we could blame him forever.
I know you want to blame Bush for runaway spending, but you seem to be forgetting that Congress, not the President, allocates spending. The Democrats have controlled Congress in 2007, 2008, and 2009. You can blame the Republicans for spending through 2006, but Democrats have been in charge of the budget for nearly 2.5 years. Own up.
President Obama stated early on when he pushed for the Stimulus Package that the Economy would worsen a bit before things stabilized. The Stock Market has shown more stability over the last few months. Economic indicators show the Recession easing. Unemployment Claim applications were down for May, as well as the number of jobs lost.
To do NOTHING to stimulate the Economy as the GOP would have done had McCain/Palin won the White House, we would be even in a worse situation. For their solution would be to CUT TAXES for the wealthy and FREEZE and CUT all spending. That would surely stimulate the Economy as Americans would see more job losses, less spending power, higher costs for the necessities.
Obama’s plan has stabilized things for the time being. Of course Wall Street firms would be happy to receive taxpayer money for free. That of course should make stocks increase.
The concern going forward is paying down debt and preventing inflation due to all the extra money flooded into the system by the Fed. If inflation isn’t controlled, purchasing power goes down and it’s harder to pay the interest on all the debt we owe to China.
But so far, so good.
@ sean2
“I know you want to blame Bush for runaway spending, but you seem to be forgetting that Congress, not the President, allocates spending.”
I wasn’t talking about spending on the budget. I’m talking about a manufactured war, a crashed economy, failed mortgage and banking institutions, and massive tax cuts for the filthy rich. NONE of which can be pinned on democrats in congress.
The deficit entering 2007 (the end of Republican leadership in Congress) was just shy of $200 billion. The deficit since the Democrats have taken control of Congress has grown enormously, to at ,least $1.75 trillion (increase of 775%):
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg
The deficit left by Republicans after 2006 can be attributed to the bipartisan tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, or to the bipartisan war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the effects of all of those barely exceeded $400 billion, less than 25% of the budget deficit. The rest of the budget deficit (more than 75%) is from the work of Democrats.
The tax cuts account for $160b, and the Iraq war has cost $871b (to date, likely to top 1.5 trillion) and it was NOT bipartisan. 99% of republicans voted for the war in Iraq (AUMF) but a majority of democrats opposed it. So the cost of the war and of the tax cuts are a fairly wide majority of the current deficit.
Oh come on now, you know that the Party of Responsibility will never in a million years EVER take responsibility for anything. Senator Wide Stance was just minding his own business… just like the rest of the Republicans. Duke Cunningham was just doing business just like all the other Republicans. George Bush was just starting wars and crashing the economy because he wanted Americans to suffer because suffering builds character.
Why even talk to those delusional fools?
$1 million a month isn’t such an unreasonable amount to spend on a senate seat. If $50 was spent on the race by the two candidates and then you add in the amount thrown in by special interest groups for advertising it could easily approach or excede $72 million or $1 million per month a senator gets to press the yea or nay button. The fact that spending on the court case is a sure way to change a vote it is a nice safe investment.
Buying influence runs everything about politics. Why should this be any different?
” If $50 was spent on the race by the two candidates and then you add in the amount thrown in by special interest groups for advertising it could easily approach or excede $72 million or $1 million per month a senator gets to press the yea or nay button. ”
Well, the difference, of course, is that the result of this contest is a foregone conclusion. This is pissing good money away, not spending it in a reasonable manner.
This is stimulus to the attorneys, which is a huge Democratic constituency. Heck, Norm’s attorney Joseph Friedberg voted for Franken. This is funneling money to a key Democratic source of funds. Lojasmo, what are you upset about?
The conclusion is known which makes each days worth of delay a known value. The election was a coin flip. I imagine that if Republicans knew they could spend $1 million per month for each vote in the senate they would have no problem raising the money for all 100 seats. Same if the shoe were on the other partisan foot.
Obama owns part of this crisis already. He will never own some parts of it. Other parts will never be attrituted to any politician — they are bigger than politics.
He will be credited for much of the recovery. So will Hank Paulsen (liberal Warren Buffett credits Paulsen with saving us from the abyss).
The sad thing is that we’ll never know on a relative basis how much better the Obama stimulus would have been than the McCain stimulus. Both were campaigning on an economic recovery package. Whose would have worked better and saddled us with less future problems? We’ll only know the answer for Obama.
I wish that government and private enterprise would have exhibited better business sense, so I never had to find out the end game with Obama’s stimulus.
There’s a pretty good e-mail going around which equates the mortgage default swaps with a woman who runs a bar, and explains the current crisis from that point of view. It’s even more maddening what the elites in government and private industry did to us all when explained in a different form.
There have been some strange trends emerging in recent polls:
( http://www.newsy.com/videos/tale_of_two_polls_) It seems that Americans feel like the economy is getting better, but don’t think the stimulus has been effective. Also, the President’s approval rating is dropping but only slightly. This means that the President remains personally popular while his policies are met with disdain. People have been deeply effected by the economic crisis and overall don’t seem to like the way the president has been addressing it, however the dismal GOP approval ratings could suggest that for many Obama is just more likable than the other guys.