Far worse than President Barack Obama's healthcare plan is the way his policies have hobbled the economy, says Wall Street Journal Deputy Editorial Page Director Daniel Henninger.
Obama was not to blame for the 2008 Depression-like financial meltdown, "but five years on, in the fall of 2013, the country's economy is still sick," and that is the president's responsibility, Henninger wrote in his column posted online Wednesday night.
"Unemployed middle-aged men look in the mirror and see someone who may never work again. Young married couples who should be on the way up are living in their parents' basement. Many young black men (official unemployment rate 28 percent; unofficial rate off the charts) have no prospect of work."
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development projects U.S. economic growth for the rest of the year will be 1.7 percent, or what Henninger said was the "about the average rate of growth of the U.S. economy for the entire Obama presidency."
The country is failing to meet its normal 3.3 percent rate of growth, he said, noting that while Obama did not create America's advanced economy in which math geeks capture the most desirable jobs "while average people wonder what hit them," his policies have left the economy "job-starved."
"A U.S. president, faced with such devastating labor-market problems and persistently weak growth, should do anything — anything — that will give the American workplace more lift. Instead, he's willing to entertain just one idea: more federal spending," he wrote.
Henninger also criticized Obama's $831 billion economic-stimulus package approved by Congress in 2009, saying "not even seismographs can detect the results."
Meanwhile, on top of what Henninger called "Hurricane Obamacare," he said Obama's administration has failed to act on the Keystone XL pipeline, constrained the economy by overregulation, raised taxes, worked to increase the minimum wage that would reduce available work, and "looted" J.P. Morgan.
Obama "has the U.S. economy on lockdown," he said. "It's the worst thing this president has done."
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