In February of 2009, President Obama went on the Today Show to discuss a variety of issues, including his plan to turn the economy around. When asked about the consequences of failure for his presidency, he replied with unusual frankness: "I will be held accountable.… If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition." The January 2009 unemployment rate had just been released a few days before that interview was broadcast, and it stood at 7.6 percent. Now, more than two and a half years later, the rate stands at 9.2 percent. Moreover, unemployment has only dipped below 9 percent in two of the past 26 months. This is the longest run of such rates since the Great Depression. In other words, Obama's three years are nearly up and he most emphatically doesn't "have this done."
Even worse, an important driver of the dismal employment situation has been the President's "signature achievement," the ironically named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The law's numerous new taxes and other disincentives for job creation, combined with the uncertainty over its ultimate fate in courts, began dragging the economy back down almost immediately after Obama signed it in March of 2010. During the first 16 months of Obama's presidency, the economy was creating jobs at a reasonably healthy rate: "Between the recession's low point in January 2009 and April 2010, net private sector job creation improved by 67,600 jobs a month." Almost immediately following passage of Obamacare, however, monthly job creation flattened to less than 10 percent of that amount.
The article goes on for a damning condemnation of ObamaCare as the job killer that it is.
The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
