We all know the economy isn’t complicated. That’s why we only use one, simple word to describe it: “economy.” If the economy was more complicated, we’d call it by more words. “Tennis racquet” is two words for a reason: a tennis racquet is complicated. It begs so many questions: Which side do I hold? How do I turn it on? Why can’t I eat rice off of the strings part? For the love of god: can we talk about something one-worded that I don’t need a master’s degree to understand?
And because the economy is so simple, it goes without saying that one and only one person or political party can be responsible for its health at any given time. To illustrate: House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas reviewed the May jobs report and released this thoughtful, meticulously researched, reflexive statement…
“The president’s policies are failing and making the economy worse…”
And Rep. Jeff Landry of Louisiana also immediately knew who was at fault…
“We have over 9% unemployment and the lowest job creation in 8 months because the President has a disastrous energy policy…”
It’s as simple as that. This is Obama’s economy. Doesn’t matter if the economy is bad or good, unless it’s good. After the Department of Labor released a strong jobs report in March, the Rep. Hensarling mentioned above released a statement reading…
“The modest improvement can be attributed to two factors – the free-market economy is slowly moving toward a recovery from this deep recession, and with Republicans controlling one lever of the lawmaking powers, job creators know the upper limits of the Democrats’ legislative pain is behind them.”
And the Rep. Landry mentioned above was even more eager to credit House Republicans…
“I believe that if anybody’s going to get a pat on the back for [lower] unemployment and the better economy, it’s House Republicans, and not the president and not the Senate.”
You’re probably wondering what happened between March and June that caused the economy to change hands from House Republicans to President Obama. I don’t know the answer to that, but it couldn’t have been complicated.
R.J. Fried