Obama's Economic Fables

Lots of things can be considered “shovel-ready.” Manure, for instance. And that’s pretty much what we got with Obama’s speech Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, touting the “success” of his $800 billion stimulus package and overall economic policy.

Just weeks after taking office in 2009, Obama visited Elkhart to urge Congress to pass his massive spending plan. At about that time, Elkhart’s unemployment rate had skyrocketed to approximately 20%. Indeed, Obama had found the perfect stage to recite his regular mantra that he “inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression.” To fix it, he offered the holy grail of statist solutions — a bigger, more intrusive, more controlling, more burdensome government.

This week, he returned to Elkhart to claim victory: “We … wouldn’t have come this far — Elkhart would not have come this far — if we hadn’t made a series of smart decisions — my administration, a cooperative Congress — decisions we made together early on in my administration.”

To hear Obama tell it, thanks to his policies unemployment has dropped to 4%, industry has revived and businesses are hiring.According to the White House, not only has manufacturing returned to Elkhart, but fewer Indiana homeowners have seriously delinquent mortgages and more kids than ever are graduating high school. We hear the ozone layer directly above Elkhart has also shown improvement!

Of course, as is typically the case with Obama’s claims, they’re high on flourish, low on facts. For example, Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN)noted credit goes to “the pro-growth policies pursued by the state of Indiana, which have made our state one of the nation’s economic success stories.”

Indeed, Indiana has repeatedly lowered its corporate tax rate to make the state more attractive to businesses. In 2012, the rate stood at 8.5%; now, it’s 6.5%. By 2022, it will be just 4.9% thanks to reforms passed by Republican state lawmakers and signed by GOP Governor Mike Pence. The personal income tax is going down, too.

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