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Recovery spending: Reagan vs. Obama.
March 13, 2012 8:03 PM

Over at Talking Points Memo, they have a fantastic chart detailing how and why unemployment fell so drastically during Reagan's first term versus Obama's:

Their commentary is spot on, as well:

Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis illustrates a key difference between Reagan's first term and Obama's: the pliancy of the Congresses they had to work with. Despite the fact that it was controlled by Democrats, Reagan's Congress was ultimately accommodative, and the result was significant fiscal expansion, which likely helped bring down the unemployment rate.

Despite presiding over a Democratic Congress, Obama enjoyed no such co-operation. Serial GOP filibusters limited the extent to which he could use deficit spending and temporary tax cuts to hasten economic recovery. Republicans bucked historically bipartisan policies to thwart the president. And when they took over the House in 2011, Republicans pursued an austerity agenda, and, separately, spooked credit markets by taking the government to the brink of default. All of these factors, combined with contraction at the state and local levels, offset the stimulative policies Obama secured at the beginning of his term. And that prefigured a significantly slower labor market recovery than Reagan enjoyed.

That's not purely a function of GOP obstructionism. Obama and Reagan pursued different policies, and Reagan's were politically more difficult for Congress to thwart. But today's GOP, unlike yesterday's Democratic Party, pursued a purposeful and unprecedented strategy of blanket obstruction designed to damage the president. And these are the results.

Indeed, this is what Obama has had to face ever since he took office, starting with Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell's comment from 2009:

MCCONNELL: We need to be honest with the public. This election is about them, not us. And we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, "Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job."

NATIONAL JOURNAL: What's the job?

MCCONNELL: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

This is what the political pundits thought about that remark at the time.

Against this intractable desire to defeat Obama instead of helping the economy, no wonder this election is going to be razor thin close.

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