If the economic legacy of the Obama administration will be remembered for anything, it’ll be what economic historians call the entitlement decade.
Now certainly the explosion in those dependent on the government can’t all be Obama’s fault. After all, as he reminded us a billion times, he did inherit a recession from George W. Bush. Fair enough. In a recession, people are going to be taking more from government simply because there are more unemployed people – but that doesn’t explain away the full expansion of the welfare state under Obama.
By 2012, long after his stimulus bill supposedly saved us from falling into another great depression, welfare spending had increased 32 percent, which made welfare the single largest item in the budget, topping Social Security and defense spending. By the end of his presidency there was a 32 percent jump in food stamp usage, with a net 10.7 million more people on the program from when he took office. That’s mainly by design. Obama’s Department of Agriculture suspended work requirements to be a recipient of food stamps – and left it up to States to individually decide when to reintroduce work requirements.
Above all, Obama set a number of godawful economic records, none of which he can attribute to George W. Bush. Can Obama blame the fact that he was the first President in American history to never achieve even 3% economic growth for a single year on Bush? Of course not. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt accomplished that…. and he presided over the Great Depression.
Luckily, at least one metric has turned positive under Trump thus far.
The number of out-of-work people collecting unemployment checks fell to a 17-year low in April, underscoring the strongest U.S. labor market in years.
So-called continuing jobless claims fell by 49,000 to 1.98 million, marking just the second time they’ve fallen below 2 million during the current eight-year-old economic expansion. Continuing claims also dipped below the 2 million mark in March.
The last time state unemployment offices sent out fewer checks to jobless Americans was in April 2000, the government reported Thursday.
Initial jobless claims, meanwhile, rose by 10,000 to a still-low 244,000 in the seven days stretching from April 9 to April 15. . The number of new applicants for unemployment benefits has registered less than 300,000 for 111 straight weeks, the longest streak since the early 1970s.
There is a “steady downtrend in place in the pace of layoffs,” noted Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities.
H/T: MarketWatch
This news comes as the stock market continues to show optimism in the Trump economic agenda. Three financial-related executive orders are planned to be signed later today, which could further fuel the rally.
Do you believe that Trump’s policies will continue to drive down unemployment? Share your thoughts below!
