"You ain't seen nothin' yet" was Ronald Reagan's standard rally-ending line during his 1984 re-election campaign. He won 49 states, losing only his opponent's home state, Minnesota, 49.7 percent to 49.5 percent.
Obama could use the same "ain't seen nothin' yet" line, except Reagan was referring to more jobs, smaller government and more individual freedom. Obama is pushing a job-killing agenda that promises to expand an already bloated government while simultaneously shrinking individual freedom.
Last week, more than seven months after Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill was rushed through Congress, the Labor Department reported that 263,000 more jobs were lost in September, increasing the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent and bringing the total number of unemployed to 15.1 million.
That doesn't count the so-called "discouraged" workers who've quit looking for work and aren't considered part of the labor force. By the Labor Department's count, the U.S. work force is 615,000 workers smaller than it was a year ago, even though the working-age population is expanding.
Also uncounted in the 9.8 percent unemployment rate are part-timers seeking full-time work. Add these underemployed part-timers and the "discouraged" to the official jobless rate and the real unemployment rate in September was 17 percent.
In January, urging quick passage of the stimulus bill, President Obama called the legislation "the most sweeping economic recovery act in history" and said it would "save or create 2.5 million jobs" -- and quickly, via "shovel-ready" projects.
Instead, the economy has lost at least 2.7 million jobs since the stimulus bill was signed into law in February.
"In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would work this well," declared Vice President Joe Biden, painting the stimulus as an unqualified success in a speech to the nation's governors on Sept. 24.
What will also work well in creating jobs, according to Obama and the congressional Democrats, is their real clunker of an economic-recovery agenda, which includes a carbon tax, higher energy prices for consumers and employers, the cancellation of secret ballots for workers in union-organizing drives, mandated hikes in the minimum wage, higher payroll taxes on businesses to fund the administration's health care schemes and higher tax rates on the incomes of the nation's key job creators.
Under tax hikes now being considered, the top federal tax rate on income would climb to 45 percent. In states with top tax rates, the combined federal, state and local tax on income would exceed 50 percent.
"Three fourths of those affected by these rate changes are small-business owners," says Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, meaning that funds will be drained directly from "the sector of the U.S. economy that's producing 63 percent of all the new jobs created."
Adding to this capital drain from the private sector and the subsequent job destruction is the Obama administration's cap-and-trade proposal to address the supposed dangers of global warming, even with kids in Idaho last week enjoying the earliest no-school snow day in history.
As Obama explained in January 2008 during an interview with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."
An analysis by the U.S. Department of Treasury estimates that the cost of cap-and-trade law per American household could run as high as $1,761 per year.
On top of seeing no problem with skyrocketing prices for electricity, Obama explained during the same interview how bankruptcy is the answer for the disobedient: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
When he took office on Jan. 20, 1981, Reagan inherited a zero-growth economy with unemployment and inflation rates, respectively, of 7.4 percent and 10.4 percent in the final quarter of 1980.
By the end of the Reagan presidency in 1988, the unemployment and inflation rates had dropped, respectively, to 5.4 percent and 4.2 percent. This economic success particularly benefited those at the bottom, who could least afford double-digit price increases, and it helped the jobless -- the millions who moved from unemployment to a paycheck.
Reagan's economic successes were produced by tax cuts and a program of smaller government. Obama, proposing the exact opposite, is likely to get a result that's the exact opposite of success
