During the 2012 re-election campaign, Republicans made some dire predictions about what would happen if Barack Obama was given a second term. Here are four big ones, compiled by Judd Legum for ThinkProgress blog.
1. Gas prices would soar. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) predicted $6.60 per gallon. Newt Gingrich, running for the GOP nomination, said Obama's energy policies would pump prices to $10 a gallon -- and promised to get the cost down to $2.50 if we elected him. Ha. Ha. I think on my last fill-up, I paid $1.93. And this is despite the "Obama policies" of rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, more EPA regulation, and limited drilling on public land.
2. Umemployment would be stuck at over 8%. That year, 2012, it had been between 8.1% and 8.3% all year. Instead the national rate is 5%, and since January 2013 over 7.8 million new jobs have been created.
3. The stock market would crash. Some experts said the stock market would drop at least 20%. Despite a downturn in 2015, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (one of the standard indexes) is up 27% compared with what it was when Obama was re-elected.
4, The entire economy was supposed to crash, according to conservative pundits. Rush Limbaugh predicted "the country's economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected." He also predicted that California would declare bankruptcy; instead it currently has a $4 billion budget surplus. The U. S. economy is growing at a respectable rate of 3.9% in the second quarter and 2% in the third quarter of 2015.
Nevertheless, wage growth has remained flat, and income inequality has only gotten worse. Both of those, however, are more the result of Republican policies of tax cuts for the wealthy, slashing of public sector jobs, and refusal to raise minimum wages. If given a freer hand by congress, Obama would have done the opposite, and those numbers would be going the other way as well.
Ralph
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