Trump is Taking Credit for the Economy Obama Improved
The recent trend in unemployment and increased job creation has nothing to do with Trump
By Bhavana Ravala
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
UPON ASSUMING OFFICE, EVERY PRESIDENT automatically has standards to be measured by, usually from previous presidents. How does a Republican president hold up against Ronald Reagan? How does a Democrat do compared to FDR himself? And what about each president’s immediate predecessor? In the last few election cycles, it has been rare to see two presidents of the same party get elected consecutively, so when presidents come into office, they are generally held against a predecessor they most likely did not agree with.
President Donald Trump is no exception to this tradition. After constantly attacking former President Barack Obama on his birth certificate, ISIS, Obamacare, and unemployment, Trump finds himself constantly compared to the 44th President, and he has strived to come out on top in that contest.
However, our current President has attempted to make himself look better by taking the same numbers he discredited during the Obama administration and using them to both boost his ego and silence those who claim Barack Obama was better for the economy.
Quite simply put, President Trump has no right to use the recent numbers on employment and job creation. The Obama administration is responsible for the drop in unemployment and boost in jobs, and for Trump to take credit for them after he relentlessly claimed to the world that Obama lied is hypocrisy at its finest.
By his last few months in office, Obama had successfully decreased unemployment to 4.9, a net decrease of 2.9 percentage points from when he first took office, and had spurred the creation of a total ten million jobs since 2009 as well. If those numbers don’t sound impressive, that is because in historical context, they really are. Jobs haven’t been created so rapidly since the economic boom that came under Bill Clinton, and five percent for unemployment is lower than the historical median of 5.5% that has existed since the days of FDR.
These numbers seem indisputable, yet Trump has taken every measure to put down the accomplishments of the Obama administration. Now, with a report saying that unemployment has dropped even lower to 4.7% and 235,000 jobs have been created in February, the new administration is ecstatic. Here, they seemingly have some rock solid evidence that President Trump is doing well.
The numbers are undeniable; however, the hypocrisy stems from Trump’s habit of picking and choosing what facts he wants to believe. The 4.7% number existed for some time under Obama as well, and Trump met it with disdain, yet now he praises it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the report that has the President overjoyed, but when the same agency had reported on Obama’s success, there was nothing but claims of fabrication to be found from Trump.
If Obama had fabricated numbers while he was in office, the numbers from February must have been fabricated as well, because economic experts from both sides of the aisle agree that Donald Trump has not been in office long enough to have affected the economy. In fact, the numbers from this past February align with the steady job growth that existed under President Obama. Experts agree that the economy is still experiencing the effects of Obama’s policies and that Trump has yet to deliver on his promises.
In summary, Obama has been responsible for low unemployment and increased job creation, and Trump is attempting to use the numbers he bashed Obama for to improve his public image. The upcoming months will tell us for sure if Trump deserves the standing ovation he desires for his work in office, but for now, our President needs to get to work and live up to his promises.
