New figures released by the government today state that the US gross domestic product grew by about 2% from July to September 2012. That may sound good, but it’s less than half the growth that the Obama administration predicted we should be seeing by now.
When Obama first came into office, in 2009, the White House projected that GDP growth this year (2012) would be 4.6 percent. Then, in 2010, the White House downplayed that projection to 4.3 percent. And last year, the forecast looked even gloomier, at 3.6 percent.
But as the numbers show, the three quarter average of this year came in even worse: 1.77 percent.
Governments get economic forecasts wrong all the time. They even get accounts of past economic performance wrong. The same administration that failed to predict this year’s economic growth, pushed through measures like the stimulus and ObamaCare, which we were told would lead to economic recovery. That recovery clearly has not happened. The president is now running on his economic plan for the next term (when he isn’t running on Big Bird or whatever juvenile distraction his brain trust comes up with next) but there’s no reason to expect that plan to perform any better than anything else he has implemented.
Mitt Romney’s reaction to today’s new numbers hit hot on the heels of the numbers themselves. “Today, we received the latest round of discouraging economic news: Last quarter, our economy grew at only two percent, less than half the 4.3% rate the White House projected after passing the stimulus bill. Slow economic growth means slow job growth and declining take-home pay. This is what four years of President Obama’s policies have produced. Americans are ready for change — for growth, for jobs, for higher take-home pay. Paul Ryan and I will deliver it.”
The bottom line is that we’re still in the recession red zone.
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