MSNBC Contributor: 'I'll Put Obama's Deficit Next to Reagan's Any Day of the Week'
I've said for years that some of the worst reporting by the media deals with issues of finance and the economy.
"Real Time" watchers were given a perfect example of this Friday evening when a college professor that contributes to MSNBC as well as Nation magazine actually said, "I’ll put my Obama deficit next to your Reagan deficit any day of the week" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
FORMER CONGRESSMAN RICK LAZIO: Mitt Romney unlike Barack Obama has 25 years of private sector experience. I think when you're looking at an economy…
MELISSA HARRIS PERRY, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: And that worked out, Wall Street’s doing great.
LAZIO: ...that just created 15,000 jobs. If you compare this, this, this recovery compared to the last ten recoveries, we would have created, if we went to the same average, we would have created about 14 or 15 million more jobs. If we went back to ’82, in 1982 Reagan inherited a ten or eleven percent unemployment rate. Coming out of that recession, they ended up creating about 14 million jobs.
MELISSA HARRIS PERRY, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I’ll put my Obama deficit next to your Reagan deficit any day of the week. Right, so…
LAZIO: I will too, because it’s about a trillion and a half dollars this year alone for Obama.
Indeed.
If you add up all of Reagan's deficits throughout his two terms, it's a combined $1.5 trillion. Adjusted for inflation, that's $2.72 trillion.
In Obama's first three years in office, his combined deficits will total $4.23 trillion. In just three years.
Anyone wanting to equate these numbers must have either no knowledge of simple arithmetic, a total disregard for facts, or both.
Now in fairness, Lazio wasn't all that accurate with numbers he was citing either.
The unemployment rate when Reagan took office was 7.5 percent. It did indeed rise to 10.8 percent in November 1982, but that was under his watch.
However, it is fair to say that Reagan created 14 to 15 million jobs. From January 1981 to January 1989, a total of 16 million employees were added to non-farm payrolls.
Lazio also underestimated the number of jobs created last month. It was 54,000 instead of the 15,000 he cited.
Regardless, I'll pit Reagan's job creation and deficit record against Obama's any day of the week.
How 'bout you?
- Noel Sheppard's blog
- Login to post comments
Comments
ROFLMAO...!!11eleventy11!!
Submitted by wizardjr on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 11:52am.
That was Teh Funny. The stupid flowing from the LSM just writes the punch lines all by itself.
Ha! These people must really
Submitted by rbosque on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:03pm.
Ha! These people must really be desperate. Ignoring reality is a symptom of terminal psychopathology.
Sister supports Bro Obama
Submitted by cbeyer on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:34pm.
No basis or substance in her arguments, Melissa Perry does what 95% of black people do. That is to support a totally failed presidency because he is a brother.
Goes to show you
Submitted by desert3030 on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:49pm.
What happens to the brain cells from continued drinking of kool aid. The last confusing factor ....is proof and facts. Way to much to handle.
Now as MSNBC or NBC, CBS would say...what a racist! That is all they can ever say.
That's what you get.
Submitted by pbthinker on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:55pm.
Democrats have been listening to the liberal meme for years and they end up being uneducated. Perhaps that's why Obama believes that saving the jobs of State Employees and Union workers, is more important than tax cuts to spur economic activity. I would love to see some enterprising organization add all of the wasted money Obama sent to the states, so they wouldn't have to make the decisions they're now having to make, to save jobs of public employees.
It's pretty easy to explain and when you think about it (and the staggering amount of money it is) you end up saying, like Sarah Palin, that you've had a WTF moment.
Under Reagan - jobs and education for blacks.
Submitted by Gary Hall on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 1:06pm.
.. and, let's see if Obama can match Reagan's record, here:
Quoting MRC's Tim Graham, on NB: Perhaps because they take all their race cues from liberal activist groups, the media ignored how blacks actually prospered in the Reagan years. Even the liberal Joint Center for Political Studies estimated the black middle class grew by one-third from 1980 to 1988, from 3.6 million to 4.8 million. In addition, black employment from 1982 to 1987 grew twice as fast (up 24.9 percent) as white employment. Real black median family income rose 12.7 percent from 1981 to 1987, 46 percent faster than whites.
Quoting me, the same day, using Larry Elder's work here (my bold):
Media reports on the 1990 Census support Elder's claims.
Allow me to phrase that in a different manner. Income amongst blacks fared better than whites during the Reagan years.
According to a 1990 report in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Compliments of a NY Times article:
Allow me to rephrase that one: The Clinton era was a very bad decade for young black men. Reagan era was good - Clinton era was bad.
So far, for Obama, it's been very bad.
The accompanying graphic, with that NY Times article, tells a very interesting tale, here's the link: Falling Behind. While the graphics are a bit small - may I suggest that the reader look at the left side of each graph - at what was going on during the Carter years, leading up to the disaster that President Reagan inherited. Then look at the Reagan years.
(;~> gary
The media has one agenda: get Ears re-elected!
Submitted by Mary Louise Turner on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 4:11pm.
It doesn't matter to the make believe media that they are total ignoramuses on such complex subjects as the economy and finance. (Let's face it: many of their viewers and readers are equally clueless). The MBM has one agenda, and one alone: to get Ears re-elected, no matter what it takes.
msnbc
Submitted by jessieH on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 4:18pm.
MSNBC thinks o'bummer can stand up to Reagan? Never gonna happen. Everyone liked Reagan. Nobody likes Soros' puppet, except for the sell-out MSM. Reagan was not perfect, he had his faults. But, every time this fool, obama, opens his mouth, he puts us deeper in debt, alienates our allies, and lies through his teeth. Go ahead and spin your lies, MSNBC, no one is listening. Your idol needs to be impeached, while we still have a country.
Finance, the economy and
Submitted by Edhenry on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 6:12pm.
Finance, the economy and religion
melissa harris whatever is
Submitted by scarletandgold on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 6:25pm.
obviously educated in the public school system,,doesnt know history and doesnt have a clue about economics....she only knows skin tone...typical racist...no prob..2012 will be the rebirth of our great nation..
Perry is a political pseudo science prof.
Submitted by Boil It Down on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 7:55pm.
Yes, by all means, lets do a detailed comparison of Obama vs Reagan. Let's do that frequently, right up to the 2012 election. Good idea Melissa!
Thankfully, Melissa Harris Perry is a professor of political science at Princeton rather than economics. Clearly, her credentials need to be reviewed and monitoring her classes might prove beneficial to her students. Hey, she wanted to be in the limelight here, she asked for the scrutiny. It would be impolite not to accept it. -bidn-
re:obama's deficit
Submitted by DrJackRyan on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 9:02pm.
Noel, great commentary but you are incorrect on obamarx's deficit...not that I am defending his deficit spending, just that the number you gave is incorrect. Please cite your reference for obama's $4.3T deficit. Otherwise, just go to the source; Bureau of Public Debt, click on link "debt to the penny". Remember when a POTUS is elected and assumes office on 20 Jan, the previous administration's budget/spending outlays, etc. is in place. I.E., the federal governments FISCAL year ends 30 Sept and begins 1 Oct. Therefore, obamarx's FIRST FISCAL year began 1 Oct 2009. The Total Public Debt Outstanding on 1 Oct 2009 was:
10/01/2009 $11,920,519,164,319.42
The Total Public Debt Outstanding on 31 May 2011 was:
$14,344,668,281,211.01
So, just subtract those numbers and you have:
-$2,424,149,116,891.60 Deficit
since obamarx First Fiscal year started 1 Oct 2009.
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/
Be careful with the numbers from CBO, they are biased, even though they claim not to be.
Congress makes the budget, duh.
Submitted by freecitizen on Sun, 06/05/2011 - 6:34am.
The one thing both Reagan's and Obama's deficits have in common is that they both were due to budgets from a Democratic Congress.
The only good deficit is a dead deficit
Submitted by lrgon on Sun, 06/05/2011 - 12:06pm.
The argument that Reagan's deficits were better than Obama's is crazy. Reagan should not have had one dollar in the red! He raised taxed and he should not have had one dollar of tax increases.
Reagan busted through the ONE TRILLION DEFICT mark! What is so conservative about that?
Yea, yea, yea. save me the comparsions.
Both were big spenders and budget busters. Reagan is a hero because he gave good speeches and spent us into poverty. I see no conservatism there.
Obama is a hero to liberals because he is doing what Reagan did only he is going at it with the help of John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan in the House and Mitch McConnell in the senate.
Where is there a "conservative win" in that policy?
"SPEND AND SPEND, TAX AND TAX ELECT AND ELECT is the policy of both Gop-ers and Democruds.
Is she going to compare jobs
Submitted by Cowboy on Mon, 06/06/2011 - 1:37am.
Is she going to compare jobs too?
So far, the number of employed Americans has GONE DOWN since Obama took office and the passing of the Obama stimulus over two years ago...