Liberal Media Lies about the Economy

by Naturalized- Texan

There are lies of commission and lies of omission. The lies from the liberal media are lies of omission when a Republican is president and lies of commission when a Democrat is president. I will provide several examples of those lies starting with the Reagan years and continuing through the Obama presidency.

President Reagan inherited a recession from his predecessor that still ranks as the worst economy since the Great Depression. During that recession we had double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, and double-digit unemployment, but none of that was reported by the liberal media.

The Reagan across-the-board tax rate cuts were enacted in 1981 to take effect in 1983. Those tax rate cuts triggered 18 years of robust economic growth interrupted by only one quarter of negative growth in the first quarter of 1991 following the Bush tax increase. The robust economic growth triggered by those tax rate cuts created 20 million jobs in the 1980s.

The liberal media falsely characterized the Reagan across-the-board tax cuts as “tax cuts for the rich.” Sound familiar? In addition, they never reported the job creation resulting from those tax rate cuts.

During the 1992 presidential campaign BJ Clinton claimed that the economy then was “the worst economy in 50 years” and the liberal media parroted Clinton’s claim as if it were fact. The facts are that economic growth during at the time of that campaign was robust with GDP growth during the four quarters of 1992 being 4.5%, 4.3%, 4.2%, and 4.3%. However, the liberal media never reported those facts.

Incidentally, following the 1993 Clinton tax increase, described by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D, NY) as the largest tax increase in the history of the world, GDP growth was cut almost in half before it recovered.

Following the Clinton administration’s frivolous anti-trust suit against Microsoft, the dot-com bubble burst in mid-2000 just as the presidential campaign was heating up. Economic growth dropped to near zero. But the media never reported that near recession-level GDP.

The economy was still struggling when the 9/11 terrorist attacks devastated the economy and there was negative economic growth in that quarter. The recovery from that devastation didn’t really start until the Bush tax rate cuts took effect in 2003. Once again the liberal media falsely characterized the Bush across-the-board tax rate cuts as “tax cut for the rich.”

I will use January 2002, the low point following the 9/11 attacks, as the basis for the remainder of this essay.

Here are the employment numbers for January 2002:

• The non-institutional civilian population was 213.1 million
• The Labor Force was 141.4 million
• 133.5 million Americans were employed
• Unemployment rate was 5.6%

Here are the employment numbers for January 2007 when the Democrats took control of Congress:

• The non-institutional civilian population was 230.7 million

• The Labor Force was 153.0 million
• 146 million Americans were employed
• Unemployment rate was 4.6%

Because of the economic boom triggered by the Bush tax rate cuts 12.5 million jobs were created between January 2002 and January 2007 and the unemployment rate dropped from 5.6% and 4.6%.

Now, let’s look at the most recent employment numbers for December 2011:

• The non-institutional civilian population was 240.6 million
• The Labor Force was 153.9 million
• 140.8 million Americans were employed
• Unemployment rate was 8.5%

Since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, 6.2 million Americans lost their jobs and the unemployment rate shot up to a phony 8.5%. I say phony because while the non-institutional civilian population increased by nearly 10 million between January 2007 and December 2011, but the Labor Force only increased by less than one million. That indicates that about 9 million Americans had left the Labor Force since January 2007. If those 9 million people had remained in the Labor Force, the real unemployment rate would be more like 13%.

Of course, the liberal media never reported the employment gains resulting from the economic boom following the Bush tax rate cuts. Moreover, they haven’t reported the job losses that have occurred since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007.

There were large spending increases following the 9/11 terrorist attacks mainly due to fighting the War on Terror and the rebuilding of the military following 8 years of neglect under Clinton.

The peak deficit between FY2002 and FY2007 (the last fiscal year that President Bush had a Republican Congress) was $417 billion which occurred in FY2004. By FY2007, the deficit had dropped to $161 billion and the national debt in FY2007 was $5.0 TRILLION.

The current deficit is $1.6 TRILLION, a ten-fold increase since the Democrats took control of Congress. The current national debt is $15.2 TRILLION, more than triple the national debt when the Democrats took control of Congress.

Again, the liberal media has never reported those massive increases in spending and debt since January 2007.

So, it’s easy to see that the liberal media are guilty of both lies of commission and lies of omission.

References:

Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics

http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives/empsit_nr.htm

Dept of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis

http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/Index.asp[/url]

FY2012 Budget Historical Tables available for download in pdf format from the Government Printing Office

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/