Obama Economy Tanks, Unemployment Up To 8.2%

Yesterday former President George W. Bush was at the White House for the unveiling of his Presidential portrait. Per tradition, Obama was there and made some remarks. He of course attacked Bush, albeit not as badly as he would during a campaign speech. Obama is completely unable to be gracious to anyone in the Republican Party. His behavior yesterday was ridiculous and unpresidential. Ever gracious, Bush didn’t respond and spent the morning making lighthearted jokes.

That after three plus years Obama is still blaming Bush for all his problems says a lot about the Obama administration. It means they haven’t been able to fix our economic problems, it means they’ve made them worse. Today the unemployment rate is up to 8.2%. Only 69,000 jobs were created in May. The government also revised the March and April job numbers down 49,000. In short they overestimated job growth in those two months, which you’ll recall wasn’t all that great in the first place. Obama’s blaming Bush, but three plus years into his administration the economy is worse than when he took office.

Not surprisingly new unemployment claims rose by 10,000 last week to 383,000. They’re likely to rise even higher as the Federal government has revised new unemployment claims upward in 62 of the last 63 weeks. The media never reports the revision, leaving the Federal government free to underestimate new unemployment claims to make Obama and company look better. What’s clear is that more people are losing their jobs, which has contributed to the increase in the unemployment rate.

What’s more clear though is that the policies of Barack Obama are not working. His financial reform package hasn’t done anything other than make the cost of business increase. Obamacare has created massive cost uncertainty in healthcare, which has trickled down to employment. Obama’s tax policy isn’t helping either. We have the highest corporate rates in the world and that most certainly affects hiring decisions. Just as bad, Obama refuses to pass the Bush tax cut extension beyond the end of the year. That creates tax uncertainty, something Obama has given us since he took office. When there’s tax uncertainty, people are less likely to invest. If people aren’t investing their money, jobs aren’t going to be created.

Obama has created a regulatory environment that makes it difficult to do business. Obama’s energy policy has made the cost of business increase, which means people aren’t investing. He said in 2008 he wanted to destroy the coal industry and he’s been largely successful. Oil prices have increased under Obama as he refuses to drill oil in America and refuses to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Electric prices are on the rise thanks to Obama’s demonization and destruction of coal. These energy cost increases directly affect the ability of corporations to hire new employees. If the choice is between keeping the lights on and hiring an additional worker, business is going to choose the lights.

Obama has been a disaster for the economy. His big government, top down approach simply doesn’t work. Let’s face facts, Obama doesn’t know anything about economics. It’s painfully obvious. He’s never run anything, he never managed the executive branch of a government and nothing in his known past shows even the slightest bit of study on economics. He’s being advised by top adviser and apparent decision maker Valerie Jarrett, a leftist ideologue with zero economic experience or study. It shouldn’t surprise us that Obama has no idea what he’s doing or that he’s making the economy worse. We have to ask ourselves whether we can afford four more years of Obama.