Conservatives On The Economy — Then And Now
My Facebook page has long been a place for lively discussions where all points of view are welcome. I have found the comments of my conservative friends to be very interesting. In my opinion, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open during these polarized times and to consider the points of view of people with whom you disagree.
On June 10, 2016, I posted the following statement in conjunction with a meme that pointed out the tremendous economic progress during the eight years of the Obama presidency: “Rush Limbaugh predicted that “the country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.” Limbaugh was confident in his prediction: “There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): Passage of health reform is “Armageddon” because the law will “ruin our country.”
Ben Sasse: “If the Affordable Care Act survives, America will cease to exist.”
Is this Armageddon or the end of America predicted by the GOP?”
We then had a very interesting discussion from our conservative friends.
Con: 20T in debt.
Pro: Still waiting for someone to explain how we could have balanced budgets and dug out of a bad recession at the same time. Also still waiting for someone to explain how the $20T in debt is killing the economy. It’s a jobs killer! No, it will cause runaway inflation! Crap, uh, China will foreclose on us! That’s not possible? Oh. Well I’m sure someone will think of something……
Pro: Republicans/conservatives don’t really care about deficits and the debts. It’s just a weapon they use to reject spending on senior citizens, the poor and the sick. The GOP/conservatives support deficit spending if it’s financing tax cuts for the wealthy and the military..
Pro: Republicans/conservatives only complain about deficits during a Democratic administration. It’s just partisan politics.
Con: Take a look a GDP, last months employment numbers, nat debt, other employment metrics besides E3. Failure, all in his own is everywhere. POS-potus.
Con: Obama Care has been a drag on growth.
Con: I’ll send you a library to read so you can go back to being a fiscal conservative.
Con: This has lead to an incredibly tepid recovery for the last 7 years. We can do better.
I bumped the thread four years later to discuss our current economic realities.
Here were my remarks:
The economy collapsed in 2020, in the fourth year of the Trump presidency. Four years ago, 4.6% unemployment wasn’t good enough for many conservatives. Currently, unemployment is 16%. Similarly, those same conservatives condemned a deficit of $585 billion. Since then, the deficit has increased to $3.7 trillion.
We need universal health care now more than ever. Four years ago, conservatives complained when 20 million additional Americans were insured and pre-existing condition protections became the law of the land. It wasn’t good enough for them. Since then, 27 million Americans have lost insurance in 2020 and Trump has filed a lawsuit aimed at ending pre-existing condition protections and taking away insurance from 20 million Americans in the middle of a pandemic.
This trip down memory lane was interesting — to say the least. Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said it best: “The only silver lining to the dark cloud of the Trump era is the daily reminder of how full of shit conservative critics of Obama were.”