What Is Taking So Long?

The US economy finally seems on a course to sustained recovery, but why is it taking so long?

Strong job creation and economic growth as measured by the gross domestic product creeping back to pre-2008 levels at close to 3.5% were predictions from Goldman Sachs a year ago.

But the Goldman analysts were one of many to predict incorrectly that 2011 would be a great year for the stock market and that higher corporate profits and increased consumer spending would all translate into decent job growth and the final nail in the recession.

The recovery looks real; it was the third month in a row in which the economy produced more than 200,000 jobs. Unemployment is holding at 8.3%.

The bigger issue is what is taking the economy so long to recover?

President Obama and his supporters are right that it takes time to dig out of a hole so deep.

But his critics also have a point. The administration's policies helped delay the rebound and make it more tepid than it might have been.

You can begin with Obama's signature first-term economic "achievement" the $800 billion stimulus plan that was supposed to create all those shovel-ready jobs and stop unemployment from rising above 8%.

We all know how that turned out, with unemployment hovering between 9% and 10% until just recently and the GDP floundering such that even some Obama supporters have attacked the stimulus' futility. Much of the money went to states to plug their budget deficits and reduce government layoffs; another amount went for ridiculous green schemes proposed by politically connected companies like Solyndra.

As for all the shovel-redy jobs, the president himself has joked about how they weren't as shovel-ready as he expected. But this is no joking matter.

Obama's biggest economic mistake was not just the wasted stimulus but a war on US businesses that he continues to wage today.

Even as evidence mounted that his stimulus plan was a failure, the president ignored the nation's economic woes and spent most of 2009 and 2010 pushing for the least business friendly mandate to come out of Washington in years- his universal health insurance plan.

Timing is everything.

Obama was not pushing a new mandate during an economic boom when employers might shrug off the costs and ignore the uncertainty, but when, as he puts it, the economy was in the ditch. Instead of giving the private sector reason for hope, he gave it more to fear - so businesses retrenched and the "recovery summer" the administration predicted for 2010 never came.

Nor did it come last year. Again some problems were clearly out of the president's control like the euro crisis which was a drag on the global economy. But so were Obama's policies.

Businesses react rationally when it comes to hiring more workers and here is what they have had to consider since 2009:

A president who does not miss a chance to bash millionaires and billionaires and who always talks up the "justice" of raising their taxes.

A financial reform law that raises costs so much that banks cannot afford to take normal business risks and lend to entrepreneurs.

An administration that is so hellbent on serving its union allies that it sues Boeing for opening a nonunion plant in South Carolina where unemployment is almost 10%.

Now that Obama is in full re-election mode, he has dropped the Boeing suit. But he still stalled the Keystone Pipeline which would have produced some real shovel-ready jobs and also more oil. And while he has put some anti-energy regulations on hold, nobody thinks he is likely to delay them if he wins re-election.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS ANYONE LOOKING TO GIVE THE PRESIDENT CREDIT FOR THE RECOVERY NEEDS TO EXPLAIN WHY IT TOOK SO LONG AND TO TELL US WHAT, EXACTLY, OBAMA DID TO MAKE IT BETTER.

In previous post I have opined on Obama's lack of leadership and business experience both of which are proving to be the major impediments to the recovery.

Happy Anniversary

Two years have passed since the passage of President Obama's landmark health insurance reform.

I think most people would agree it is time for a report card.

Before passage in March 2010, Obama promised:

Hearings on the law would be broadcast on C-SPAN, I do not believe there were any.

Bi-partisan committees, yet Republicans were virtually locked out of closed door meetings.

We would all embrace it - did you get that impression from the town hall meetings?

We would see lower premiums - industry people are telling me premiums are rising 25% to 40%.

America's dissatisfaction with ObamaCare continues to grow and the Supreme Court will be taking up the issue of the individual mandate very soon. More than 20 states have filed suit against the federal government to rescind ObamaCare, an unprecedented action in U. S. history. Burdens placed on states to implement health insurance exchanges will bust budgets so most states have done nothing to establish the exchanges.

The Obama Administration continues to deny medical loss ratio (MLR) exemptions for states where companies are threatening to leave the market, thus nullifying the promised increase in competition; meanwhile many exemptions have been granted for special groups, notably unions.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean predicted that as many as one-third of the nation's small businesses will dump their employees onto the exchanges. He quoted from a McKinsey study that concludes most small businesses are not going to be involved with health insurance anymore once this all takes effect.

This law, when fully implemented in 2014, will cause states to be overwhelmed by the glut of people thrust onto their exchanges. The amount of subsidization and sheer size of this all-encompassing law will turn what was once a health insurance system in need of some tweaking into a crippled and mangled mess, leaving the states and the economy on life support.

If the health care system needed some fixing two years ago, President Obama himself could not have predicted any better the situation our nation will face if the law survives the Supreme Court review and goes into full effect. He said: "If all we are doing is adding more people to a broken system then costs will continue to skyrocket , and eventually somebody is going to be bankrupt, whether it is the federal government, state governments, businesses or individual families."

I could not have said it better myself!

Happy Anniversary, America