So let's review the excuses for Obama's poor economic record:
* The first huge spending increase came in the FY 2009 budget.
Obama signed most of the FY 2009 spending bills, because the Dem-controlled Congress stalled them so they could pad them and he could sign them.
* Freddie and Fannie had to be taken over by the federal government, and that cost a lot of money.
And that would not have been necessary if then-Senator Obama and other Dems in Congress had not blocked Republican attempts to rein in Freddie and Fannie's dangerous intervention in the housing market. This is all on YouTube, if you don't like to read.
* TARP cost a lot of money.
Then-Senator Obama voted for TARP, and TARP would have been much smaller or even unnecessary if Senator Obama and other Dems had not blocked every Republican attempt to rein in Freddie and Fannie. There would have been far fewer risky home loans to bundle into toxic assets in the first place if Freddie and Fannie had not opened the flood gates by their massive intervention.
* There was a sizable Social Security cost-of-living increase for FY 2009, and that cost a lot of money.
Please. It's not like SS cost-of-living increases had never happened before! They happen every few years, for goodness sake. That's a poor explanation for the tripling of the deficit in just one year. By 2007, before the recession hit, and before the Dems took control of Congress, Bush had the deficit down to less than $200 billion. But then the Dems jacked up spending in the FY 2009 spending bills that they stalled so Obama could sign them.
* The huge increase in the number of people who have left the workforce is due to a large wave of people retiring.
Nope, sorry. That dog won't hunt. See the OP.
* The U-6 is not a good gauge because it includes people who are employed. So it doesn't matter that the U-6 has been much higher under Obama than it was under Bush.
The "employed people" in the U-6 are people who want full-time work but can't find it and who are stuck in part-time jobs that they're working only out of necessity. The rest of the people in the U-6 are jobless. The U-6 is widely recognized as the "real unemployment rate."
By the way, the labor force participation rate has been worse under Obama than it was under Bush, as I've documented in previous replies. This fact should be no surprise since the U-6 has been so high under Obama.
Obama did want that but few others did. With a solid majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate, Democrats could have passed ant bill they wanted. While Republicans were against any healthcare reform Democrats were pitching, the public option was dropped from the bill because Democrat leaders didn't want it in. While Republicans didn't either, they were helpless to block it had Democrats wanted it.
