Top Economic Myths

Obama Losing Jobs

Myth:

The US economy has been losing jobs under President Obama.

Fact:

The economy has shown steady job growth for the last two years.

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February 2012 marks 24 consecutive months of private-sector job growth, with 3.9 million jobs added during that time.

By contrast, in the first 38 months of the George W Bush administration (Jan 2001 - Feb 2004) the economy lost 2.7 million private-sector jobs. After regaining economic growth in 2004 to 2008, the economy once again lost 4.7 million private-sector jobs in last 12 months of President Bush's administration (Jan 2008 - Jan 2009) resulting in a net private-sector job loss of 646 thousand jobs in his full 8 years in office. [source: Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Click on the image below to go to an interactive chart.

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Excessive Spending

Myth:

Spending by the Obama administration has been out of control.

Fact:

Bush added over FIVE TIMES MORE to the deficit.

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Bush's policies added a whopping $5.1 trillion to the national debt, almost doubling it during his two terms.

On the other hand, Obama's budget estimates predict an additional $983 billion added to the deficit over the next eight years - less than one fifth that of Bush. (Click on the image to see detail.)

(From "Doing the Math on Obama's Deficits" by Ezra Klein for the Washington Post - 2/1/12.)

Two-thirds of the projected Obama deficit represents the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts that the President agreed to in order to prevent a government shutdown by Republican House members.

It's also important to note that Bush assumed office with a $250 billion surplus for the previous fiscal year - and a booming economy. He left his successor with a $1.2 trillion budget deficit and an economy that was losing 750,000 jobs a month.

It was GOP policies that led to the Great Recession - make no mistake about it. More of the same is not the way to put America back on track.

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Big Government?

Myth:

Obama is exploding the size of government.

Fact:

The government now has 273,000 FEWER employees than it did - under Reagan.

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The myth that Democrats are for "Big Government" is trotted out so often that most Americans take it as fact. In truth, it's utterly false.

The 2013 budget projects the loss of an additional 300,000 government jobs - on top of the almost 500,000 lost since January 2011, for a net loss of 785,000 government jobs since Obama took office.

Texas governor Rick Perry, one of the loudest complainers when it comes to the size of government, has 650,000 government employees working for its 25 million people - a ratio of 2.6 percent. The federal government has a ratio of just 0.7 percent by comparison. This is the smallest ratio of government workers to US population since Eisenhower.

The confusion happens when people make comparisons on the cost of government, which includes outlays for Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment and Defense, and most Americans don't want to see cuts in Social Security or Medicare. (Note that the Affordable Care Act will cut Medicare costs by $1 trillion over ten years - without affecting quality of care.) See article here.

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