Facts VS Republican Talking Points

The last 4 years we have listened to republican talking points tearing down President Barack Obama while trying to make the claim that he is the worst president ever, lets look at some of those talking points and the facts that they ignore.

　

1 - Obama is the “Food Stamp President”

Yes it is a fact that there are a record 44 million people on food stamp, or an increase of 13 million since he took office but there has been few changes to the program and most of the new recipients are now on in because of a 2008 recession that cost America millions of jobs and has not fully recovered yet. Aside from that there are other facts ignored

Food Stamps from inception until 2001 = 17.5 Million

Food Stamps when President Bush left office = 33 million (an increase of 15.5 million)

Food Stamp use now = 44 million (an increase of 11 million)

So not only has President Obama not increased the program at a record pace but hasn’t even been the president who expanded it the most.

　

　

　

2 - Obama has increased the debt faster than all presidents before him combined

Debt is at 17 trillion dollars lets look at how rapid it was increased 1^st

Reagan Start 848 billion (from every president before him)

Reagan end 2.7 trillion

Increase 218%

Bush Start 5.7 trillion

Bush Left 10.6 Trillion

Increase 86%

Obama Start 10.6

Obama current 16.75

Increase of 60%

Now those numbers are deceptive when you figure in the surplus that President Bush was left when he took office, the CBO projected the Clinton surplus would pay off the debt by 2010 so instead of a zero debt it was actually 10 trillion, you could actually pin the whole 10 trillion on president Bush. Also when Obama took office the deficit was 1 trillion a year so if he didn’t add a single penny the debt would currently be over 15 trillion from just continuing the Bush policies from 2008. What you really have to look at is the deficit and that in fact has decreased twice in the last 30 years - first under President Bill Clinton and now under President Obama who has cut the yearly deficit by 50% from over 1 trillion a year to about 600 billion.

　

　

3 - Obama has failed economic policies

Lets just look at the facts again of just the last 2 president

Bush took office in a small recession, he cut taxes to stimulate job growth and instituted typical conservative polices and he did end the recession after 33 months of job losses and by the time he left office added an average of 20,000 jobs a month.

Obama passed his version of a jobs bill with the stimulus package and ended a much deeper recession in 11 months and has since averaged over 100,000 jobs created a month in the private sector. But why is unemployment still high? The job growth is slow and I will not argue with that but considering that we went from losing 800,000 jobs a month to gaining 160,000 that’s almost a million jobs a month increase and while the private sector has been adding the public sector (or government jobs) has been decreases with a loss of over 1,000,000 public sector jobs since Obama took office.

So both ideas end recessions but facts and history again prove that tax cuts do it much slower and add more to the debt, when you give rich more of their own money they don’t invest it in employees but in themselves.

　

4. Republicans are for small government and Democrats for big

This is simple by looking at last 30 years

Reagan - averaged public sector jobs per year in office increase 25,000

Clinton - Average Public sector jobs per year in office - 42,000 (that’s right negative)

Bush Jr. - Average public sector jobs per year in office increase 5,000

Obama - has lost over 1,000,000 public sector jobs since taking office

　

History has shown if you like the talking point of smaller government and less debt you vote republican but if you really support smaller government and less debt you vote democrat. Then again these are facts which often can not penetrate the bubble that many conservatives live in.