KNOWLES: Obama Didn’t Build That

Former president Barack Obama took Presidents Day as an opportunity to burnish his lame legacy by claiming credit for his successor’s booming economy. “Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations,” tweeted Obama, “I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.” Unfortunately for the former president, to borrow Obama’s own words, he didn’t build that.

Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history. pic.twitter.com/BmdXrxUAUf

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 17, 2020

Obama spent $831 billion of taxpayer funds on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, but he didn’t get much return for his investment. The allegedly “shovel-ready jobs” failed to materialize, and unemployment remained around 10% during Obama’s first two years in office. That rate eventually began to tick down, but only because workforce participation plummeted. At least five million working-age Americans simply gave up looking for jobs and therefore were not counted in the official unemployment rate. Meanwhile, wages flatlined, and over 300,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared.

The recession of 2008 offered covered for Obama’s failures. Never mind that great recessions ought to spur great recoveries, as Ronald Reagan showed us from 1983 through the early 1990s. Obama blamed his economic record on the mess he inherited from George W. Bush. The best defense he could muster for himself was that he’d ‘saved us from a great depression,’ an unfalsifiable historical hypothesis that could never be subjected to scrutiny. But Obama took his excuses too far and unwittingly undercut any credit he might claim for our presently booming economy: Obama made predictions.

As late as 2016, Obama insisted that automation and outsourcing meant that many manufacturing jobs were gone forever. During a town hall just seven months before leaving office, Obama told an Indiana steelworker, “Some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back.” He mocked then-candidate Donald Trump’s promise to restore American manufacturing, asking, “What magic wand do you have?” Magic wand or not, manufacturers added more than six times as many jobs in Trump’s first two years as they did during the final two under Obama. After Trump’s election, manufacturing confidence rose to an all-time high. Despite Obama’s pessimism, the jobs came back.

Beyond manufacturing, Obama warned in 2010 that high unemployment overall could become the “new normal.” Last year, the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since May 1969. Last September, the unemployment rate for black Americans, Hispanics, and people with disabilities hit record lows. The unemployment rate for people without a high school diploma reached the lowest rate ever recorded. The “new normal” of scarcity has given way to a new “new normal” of abundance.

Under President Trump, the U.S. economy has soared to heights not merely unseen but unforeseen during the Obama years. Now Obama wants to take credit for the accomplishments of his successor. But the record is clear. When it comes to our present prosperity, somebody else made that happen.