Mitt Romney claims his business experience has prepared him to be a job-creating president. But, as economist Paul Krugman has pointed out, America is not a corporation, and “making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits.” Success as a business executive does not mean that you are the right person to run the country.
Romney’s economic plan from top to bottom will reinforce America’s income disparity by redistributing wealth from the middle class to the richest. It will not create jobs and it will not benefit the average American family.
President Obama, on the other hand, remembers that the last time America faced an economic crisis of this magnitude (the Great Depression in the 1930s) tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans did not save the nation. Nor did a lower corporate tax rate. Nor did deregulation.
It was mass mobilization that put people to work across the country, building tanks and ships for the war and bridges and roads at home. And when that war ended, the newly revitalized middle class was able to reap and keep the fruits of their labors because of smart regulations that protected people, not banks.
President Obama believes that investing in the American people will boost our economy, while Mitt Romney wants to invest in banks and the business community.
The parallels between 1945 and today aren’t perfect; but in 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act proved the principle of John Maynard Keynes and Franklin D. Roosevelt right again. Our economy started growing again. We added jobs.
When President Obama took office, the country was in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month.
Now, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we have had 31 consecutive months of job growth and 5.2 million new private sector jobs. The U.S. economy added 104,000 private sector jobs in September alone, and the most recent jobs report released last Friday showed that unemployment has dropped below 8%, the lowest rate since January 2009.
Although the job market may seem bleak to some, especially to college students and recent graduates, it will be a lot worse in four years if Romney is elected president.
The causes of the economic crisis had been building up for decades. No president could have repaired all of the damage Obama found when he was elected in just four years.
President Obama understands that there’s a lot more work to be done and that more jobs must be created in the public sector, but a positive trend of 31 consecutive months of job growth shows that Obama is the president we need to continue to strengthen our economy.
