Larry Elder: Trump's economy is so good that Dems' new talking point is Obama built it

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Obama raised taxes, spent nearly $1 trillion on a so-called stimulus plan, increased regulations and signed a new entitlement program known as "ObamaCare." Reagan did the opposite. He decreased taxes and continued deregulation. Differences in results were stark. Obama's recovery, according to the Joint Economic Committee, averaged an inflation-adjusted GDP growth of 2.2 percent over the next 25 quarters.

The average recovery following post-1960 economic slowdowns, which lasted more than 12 months, is 3.9 percent. Under President Ronald Reagan it was 4.8 percent. Obama was the first president ever to preside over an economic recovery in which not a single year of the economy grew at least 3 percent.

Obama's own economic team anticipated much higher growth. In February 2009, the Obama administration published its "Analytical Perspectives: Budget of the U. S. Government: Fiscal Year 2010." It said: "The Administration projects an economic recovery will begin in the second half of the year sparked by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. By the end of the year, real growth is expected to have reached 3-1/2 percent at an annual rate, a pace that is maintained through 2010. In 2011-2013, the rate of growth in real GDP is projected to accelerate to around 4-1/2 percent annually for several quarters."

The economy under Obama did not come close to meeting his team's projections. Trump boasts about "historic lows" in unemployment for blacks. But in January 2016, black liberal commentator Tavis Smiley admitted: "Sadly, and it pains me to say this, over the last decade, black folk in the era of Obama have lost ground in every major economic category. Not one, two or three, but every major economic category, black Americans have lost ground."

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