Better Off Now Part One: The Economy

It's a tough idea to believe, but America is better off now than it was four years ago.

We don't want to believe it because we have always believed that we could do better and the recovery is somewhat slow, but there has been a recovery and we need to acknowledge it as well as the President's role in it.

When President Obama took office, the unemployment rate was 7.9%, today it is 7.8%. A critic would argue this is barely a recovery, but remember that the economy was STILL in free-fall and the unemployment rate continued to increase until President Obama enacted the economic stimulus.

So more Americans are working now, but what about wall street? Surely the President's crippling regulations have hurt us there. Actually no, the S&P 500 has gone up more than 74% and the nasdaq has been doubled. In other words, the stock market has done better during Obama's presidency than in any of the past five presidencies.

When President Obama came in to office, many Americans had houses that were underwater and were facing foreclosure. However, President Obama reduced costs to refinance for FHA mortgages and brought the overall mortgage rate down.

Of course corporations are doing much worse under President Obama, right? Republicans are the party for the rich and Democrats hate corporations, right? WRONG, corporate profit rates are much higher than they were when President Obama took office and he plans to lower the corporate tax rate in order to help with growth.

Republicans can say whatever they want about the current state of the economy, but the situation now is as clear as it was 80 years ago: republicans got the country into an economic mess and democrats cleaned it up. The question for voters is not about whether they wanted a faster recovery or not; it's about whether they want continued economic growth, with balanced deficit reduction or insanely unbalanced deficit reduction plans and rolling back of regulations which will plunge the country in to another depression.