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Down Is Up and Up Is Too
Today the Obama Administration drastically lowered its already dismal estimate of first quarter GDP. At the end of April, the Commerce Department claimed the GDP fell at a 1.0 percent pace. The agency has now revised that to a 2.9 percent annual rate, which is the economy’s worst performance in five years.
In the heady days of -1.0% growth, Democrats blamed the bad numbers on an unusually cold winter, but maintained there was one bright spot. The only reason the number wasn’t worse, they claimed, was because healthcare spending had drastically increased. Ignoring that Obama promised his health care reform would “bend the cost curve down,” the left praised the jump in spending — Obamacare saved the economy!
Today’s revision shows that healthcare spending actually dropped along with everything else. In a bad economy, no one wants to spend money on anything. But to our non-partisan press, yesterday’s spin is ancient history; what’s important is protecting the president today.
In April, Sarah Kliff of Vox celebrated the increase in healthcare spending with a puff piece parroting the White House line. (According to the HTML link, Vox’s original title was “The Upside of Faster Health Care Growth.”) But with today’s bleak news, she dismissed those with the temerity to praise higher healthcare costs.
That time when health care spending went down and people got sad about it. #bizarrowonkery
— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) June 25, 2014
Like clockwork, her website went from praising increased health care spending to praising reduced health care spending. Of course, Kliff wasn’t the only reporter to change her tune:
Health care spending is on the rise, and that’s a good thing http://t.co/qld4G99MKT
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) April 30, 2014
Without an Obamacare-driven boost to health care spending, economic growth would have stalled out completely. http://t.co/WpXYBntWz5
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) April 30, 2014
Obamacare just saved the U.S. economy from contraction http://t.co/mzewAgBQK5 pic.twitter.com/YslsvpfXXW
— HuffPostBiz (@HuffPostBiz) April 30, 2014
To Huffington Post’s credit, they’re the only outfit so far to offer any kind of walkback.
Maybe Obamacare didn’t save the U.S. economy after all http://t.co/bKRlfjUsL2
— HuffPostBiz (@HuffPostBiz) June 25, 2014
It is bizarre that so many reporters and flacks focus on winning today’s news cycle without considering future news cycles. Don’t they realize that, with the exception of the IRS, the Internet is forever?
Published in General
<poindexter-on> Dude, that was like last April ago.</poindexter-off>
Oceania has always been at war with East Asia…
Health care spending is probably good for people’s health, but I don’t see how it is good for economic growth. Would spending more money on dresses also be good for the economy? Maybe Vox can explain that to me. I know that my daughter is happier when we spend more money on dresses.
One thing that just annoys me to no end is the constant refrain (at least whenever a Dem is in office) that the unusual weather is responsible. We had a cold winter, sure. But 1) this is a big country, and some areas will have exceptionally cold weather, while others will have exceptionally mild weather. This happens every winter. And 2) we’re a big, modern country. How much of the economy is really weather dependent these days?
The Obama economy is much like Narnia: Always winter, never Christmas.
When GDP slips out of sight
and wintry winds freeze us at night
the lib’rals don’t care
’bout the chill in the air
O’s plied them with Turkish delight!
So if the Rs take the Senate next year, will the press blame bad economic news on the bad,bad congress, or will it all still be O’s economy of bread and honey and sparkles and unicorns?