Newsweek: "Hit the Road, Barack"

Newsweek: "Hit the Road, Barack"
By Kate Hicks
8/19/2012

Newsweek has been known for its absurd cover stories of late: from using the only unflattering photo of Michele Bachmann available, to calling Obama the "first gay president," the bias has unmistakeably trended leftward. But this week's edition features a head story of a very different breed: Niall Ferguson, former advisor to John McCain during his run for the White House, writes that Obama's policies have failed, and it's time to replace him.

The Daily Beast has the article live now, including this particularly damning passage:

In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year.

Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2 percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.

Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.

And all this despite a far bigger hike in the federal debt than we were promised. According to the 2010 budget, the debt in public hands was supposed to fall in relation to GDP from 67 percent in 2010 to less than 66 percent this year. If only. By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and Spain have seen a bigger deterioration.

Those four paragraphs are utterly jawdropping. This president ran on the promise of alleviating our economic crisis, and all he's done is exacerbate it and hid the numbers with the government entitlement programs as a bandaid.

The whole article is worth reading, and here's something to consider: when you're a Democrat and Newsweek is running a cover story against you, you're probably in trouble.
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To read another article by Kate Hicks, click here.