Bill Clinton's former deputy attorney general, Webster Hubbell, has written a commentary highly critical of President Obama's economic policies, which he says have failed to address child hunger and chronic joblessness.
Hubbell, writing for the Clyde-Fitch Report, picked apart Obama's alleged economic accomplishments as spelled out in his State of the Union address as mostly smoke and mirrors.
Obama boasted, "We’ve seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years."
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"Those are indeed impressive statistics, especially if your well-being is determined by your stock portfolio," Hubbell wrote. "But as I listened, I wondered if I was missing something. Are we all doing so much better since the president took office?"
Hubbell said many economists and Obama"are almost giddy" when spouting statistics showing unemployment at its lowest point since 2008; consumer confidence doubled; and low gas prices expected to help consumer spending.
The State of the Union was packed with references to how things have turned around and how it was time to concentrate efforts toward rebuilding the middle class. Obama said it was time to leave “mindless austerity” and build more warships.
The real news is what Obama didn't tell the American public.
As Hubbell noted:
"Not once during Obama’s speech did I hear reference to the fact that, in 2014, one in five children in America lived in poverty and food stamps. Or since then, come to think of it. But that number has also doubled during the Obama years and it is inconsistent with the idea that the economy has 'recovered.' Indeed, in 2008, one in eight children was on food stamps; today’s percentage of children in poverty is a staggering 23.1 percent – only Romania’s figures are higher, according to UNICEF. In all, nearly 47 million Americans receive the food stamps that keep them one step away from starvation, yet Congress considers starvation to be a 'spending problem,' not a moral disgrace, one they solved by cutting $8 billion from the food stamp program. And the president must agree: he signed those cuts into law."
Hubbell blasted Obama for proposing to increase the budget for the military by $40 billion, in a year when the 12-year war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down.
"How do you turn toward the middle class by denying children scraps from our bountiful table? It’s in that term – 'middle class' – that we find an answer," Hubbell wrote.
He said everyone who has a full-time job in America thinks of themselves as middle class, whether they be lawyers, doctors, plumbers, nurses or dock workers.
"It's as American as apple pie to consider ourselves middle class," he wrote.
So even though it is not numerically accurate to categorize every working American as "middle class," nearly everyone listening to Obama's speech would have thought he was talking to them, and herein lies the deception, says Hubbell.
"So it’s natural for the president, economists and the media to focus on what they want to believe about our economy and to ignore information that conflicts with those beliefs, even if it means ignoring deeper signs of trouble out there on the periphery. When economists say that reliance on food stamps will lessen as things improve, and when data indicates that the number of children on food stamps since 2008 has almost doubled, that’s cognitive dissonance. Maybe, just maybe, something is missing in this great recovery?"
One of the biggest deceptions is the unemployment rate and how it's calculated.
"We celebrate lower unemployment numbers, but know that the majority of the drop is caused by people exiting the workforce. (Interestingly, the head of Gallup, Jim Clifton, called our government's unemployment numbers 'A Big Lie.'
"Obama calls the meager attempts to rein in federal spending 'mindless austerity' while the government spent more than $3.45 trillion last year – 18% more than when he took office. 'Austerity' is not 18% more spending."
Hubbell said a great nation is judged on how well it takes care of its own poorest residents, and he urged the president to "feed more children" rather than build more planes or battleships "or otherwise declare the economy 'recovered.' I am not an economist, and it may not make economic sense, but it's the right thing to do."