It's never easy, is it?

I was sitting outside at work yesterday, enjoying a coffee and smoke, and talking to another employee who is roughly my age. We discussed the fact that, even though Obama says the worst is over, it's damn good to be working while we watch the unemployment rate rise and the benefits for unemployment run out.

This led us to ask how far back we had to remember until we could find a time when it was this bad (economically) in our living memory... and the best we could do (meaning the closest historical analogy) is the recession of '82. Now, granted... I wasn't technically working then. I was still in high school, but I do recall the impact that recession had on my family. It forced my mother to go back to work full-time at a minimum wage job, and my father to take better-paying jobs that put him on the road three out of four weeks a month.

Nationally, the unemployment rate ran higher than 10%, and inflation was still above the 11% mark (down from its 13.8% high at the end of the Carter years). Consumer spending was low, taxes were still high (especially state and local taxes, to combat the cost of inflation), and fuel was higher than it had been in 6 years. Reagan's tax cuts of '81 helped (I'm sure), but such evils as the Alternative Minimum Tax was still eating at middle-class America like a disease (it was never adjusted by the Reagan Administrations at all).

So, let's compare what Reagan did in '81-'82 to what Obama has done in '09-'10 to combat similar recessional economies and bring the value of the American dollar back to where it should be.

In '81, Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% over the course of 8 years, with an immediate reduction to 50% in the first year. This was the largest tax rate reduction in American history, and I simply cannot see where this was NOT a contributor to the boom economies of the 90s. He also lowered the lowest marginal rate from 14% in 1979 to 11% in 1982, which resulted in nearly 40 million additional families paying taxes come April than had been paying previously. I'm inclined to think that, while this probably wasn't good news for those families that now had to pay, it wasn't an undo hardship either... deductions were just as available then as they are now. (my sources are all HERE)

Obama has promised that those making less than $250,000 per year would not see their taxes increase "one dime"... yet he is going to allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire in December of this year, which will equal an 8% to 17% increase in marginal tax rates across the board, and will put more people onto the tax rolls than have been paying since 2002. How the Administration can allow this to happen and NOT see it as a tax increase, I have no idea... but they seem to be trying to find that option each and every day.

Reagan reduced the rate at which government spending increased over the course of his terms, while Obama has ushered in an era of spending that hasn't been imagined since FDR first took office in 1933. Reagan did increase the Federal debt (from $700 billion to $3 trillion, source HERE), but that was over the course of 8 years. Obama has eclipsed that in less than two (source HERE), with no appreciable gain in either employment levels or GDP figures.

I could spend time and energy pointing out the flaws that I think can be found in Reaganomics... but they pale in comparison to Obama's recovery plans, and whatever flaws Reagan had in his efforts only slowed what was a real, measurable and lasting "stimulus" on the national economy.

Reagan's promise to keep American dollars where they would do the most good (in the paychecks of American workers) did what Obama has not been able to do... instantly impact a sagging economy, even if some indicators (like unemployment) remained artificially high in the first few years of the Reagan recovery. Furthermore, Reagan did something else that the Obama White House has been unable to do: accept responsibility. No one that I have spoken to, and nothing that I have read, shows me where Reagan spent any time at ALL blaming the Carter White House or previous Congresses for the troubles he was working to fix. Obama and the Cabinet today have done nothing BUT blame Bush... constantly and without end. He blamed a failed understanding of conservative government principles and fiscal responsibility... nothing more.

This is the example that should be held up in comparison to Obama's policies each and every day in the conservative press. Why is it NOT being done?