Obama vs. Reagan: Not Even Close

The President said that the private sector is doing just fine. And he's taking a lot of heat for it.

But he said something else right before that, that bears equal scrutiny. It's his attempt to skew the facts, and take credit for a "healthy" economy:

“As I said, we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine.”

$4.3 million in 27 months.

This running tally of created jobs is one of the President's favorite statistics, yet our President has been in office for three and a half years.

So what does the whole jobs picture look like?

Total non-farm payrolls for the last 41 months, since Obama was inaugurated in January 2009. The President likes to start counting "jobs created" at the red line.

The country is still down half a million jobs from when he took over. In that time, this country has added 8 million more people of working age, but half a million fewer jobs.

That's part of why today 23 million Americans (15%) are unemployed or underemployed. The President seems to think he deserves a round of applause for 27 months of job growth, out of his 41 months on the jobs. But in comparing that to Ronald Reagan's recovery, there was job growth in 81 of its first 82 months.

In fact, when you compare Obama's recovery with Reagan's, the differences are breath-taking. We're 53 months from the start of the recession. We're down 4 million jobs.

At this point after the '81 recession, we were up 7 and a half million jobs. In fact, if the current recovery were creating jobs at the same rate that Reagan's did, 15 million more Americans would have a job today.

So for the President to say that the private sector is "doing fine" is flat-out ridiculous. We could be doing so much better. And for him to boast about his record of job-creation - well, now you know the whole story.

There’s one more thing we can credit to Ronald Reagan. The question every voter should consider. He once said, “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the store than it was 4 years ago?”

And that's 53 months after the recession started. It's 35 months after the recession supposedly ended, back in June 2009. Now, the President's excuse for all this is that he inherited a tanking economy, and he needs more time to turn it around. But taking this much time is unprecedented. The average recovery since World War 11 until now was 10 months.