[American Thinker] The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell argues, along with the left, that President Trump's economic achievements are not all that impressive. In her last column, she concludes:
Presidents get too much blame when the economy sours and too much credit when it improves. Not that you'd know this from Trump's boasts whenever some good news ‐ even news that's not actually that good ‐ rolls in.
While I generally agree with her statement that presidents get too much blame and too much credit for the economy, there are some problems with her reasoning.
When one president increased regulations as fast as he could, foisted high taxes on us, and always sought more power for the government, and the other president is trying to reduce regulations as fast as he can, cut taxes, and reduce the power of government, it can have a heck of a lot of impact.
President Obama's policies led to the slowest economic recovery in seventy years, despite massive government spending increases, huge injections of cash by the Federal Reserve, and punishingly low interest rates, which discouraged savings.
Today, I have read that the economy is growing at the fastest rate since 2005 (after Bush's tax cuts), and the first quarter showed the fastest personal income growth since 2007. (It looks as though the tax cuts are trickling through.)
We had eight years of Obama to judge his policies, and the results weren't good. Now we have had a mere one year to judge Trump's, and only four months after the tax cuts, so we will see. |