Obama factually squashes GOP/Fox News myth about his economy
President Obama used facts backed up by post entered charts to disprove the Republican and Fox News lies that have been told over his presidency. You can watch the entire speech here along with the entire transcript.
So let me be as straight as I can be about the choice of economic policies that you are going to face. And I’m going to start with the story that not every Republican but most Republican candidates up and down the ticket are telling. And it goes something like this. …
So their basic story is: America’s working class, America’s middle class — families like yours — have been victimized by a big, bloated federal government run by a bunch of left-wing elitists like me. And the government is taking your hard-earned tax dollars and it’s giving them to freeloaders and welfare cheats. And we’re strangling business with endless regulations. And this federal government is letting immigrants and foreigners steal whatever jobs Obamacare hasn’t killed yet. … that’s the story that’s been told. And I haven’t turned on Fox News or listened to conservative talk radio yet today, but I’ve turned them on enough over these past seven and a half years to know I’m not exaggerating in terms of their story. That’s the story they tell. … And their basic message is anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-trade, and, let’s face it, it’s anti-change. … And look, a lot of people believe it. And if what they were saying were true, I suppose it would make sense to run on a platform of just rolling back everything we’ve done over these past seven and a half years, and happy days would be here again.
So let me just do some quick myth-busting. And I’m going to start with the biggest myth, which is that the federal government keeps growing and growing and growing, and wasting your money and giving your tax dollars to people who don’t deserve it.
Now, here’s the truth — you can look it up. These journalists here, they can do some fact-checking. As a share of the economy, we spend less on domestic priorities outside of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — we spend less than we did when Ronald Reagan was President. (Applause.) When President Reagan or George W. Bush held this job, our deficits got bigger. When Bill Clinton and I have held this job, deficits have gotten smaller. (Applause.) Our deficits have not grown these past seven and a half years; we’ve actually cut the deficit by almost 75 percent. (Applause.)
Moreover, there are fewer families on welfare than in the 1990s. Funding has been frozen for two decades. There’s not a whole bunch of giveaways going on right now. Aside from our obligation to care for the elderly and Americans with disabilities, the vast majority of people who get help from the federal government are families of all backgrounds who are working, striving to get back on their feet, striving to get back into the middle class. And sometimes, yes, their kids need temporary help from food stamps when mom and dad are between jobs. …
Let’s look at the numbers. Again, I just want to — I’m just giving facts here. I will have some opinions later, but right now I’m just giving facts. I signed the Affordable Care Act into law over six years ago. Since then, our businesses have created jobs every single month. We did this while covering 20 million Americans who didn’t have health insurance; ending discrimination against preexisting conditions for everybody, including those who had health insurance — (applause) — and dramatically slowing the rate in which health care costs were going up.
In the decade before Obamacare, employer-based premiums grew by an average of 8 percent a year. That meant you were paying that much more every year for health insurance. Last year, they grew by 4 percent — half as fast as they were growing. That doesn’t mean you’re happy about the 4 percent, but it wasn’t 8. Today, the average family’s health insurance premium is $2,600 less than it would have been if premiums had kept on going up at the pace before Obamacare. (Applause.) And, by the way, just for folks here in Indiana, last year, most Hoosiers who shopped around for Obamacare on HealthCare.gov found plans that cost 75 bucks a month or less. For the millions of Americans who buy on HealthCare.gov, they get tax credits to help them pay for it. The average price increase this year has been four bucks a month. There hasn’t been a double-digit percentage hike — four bucks a month.
But my bigger point is to bust this myth of crazy liberal government spending.
Remember to pass this to your Right Wing friends and not so informed liberal friends. The numbers are astounding and never reported.