OPINION:
You’d think it would be big news when the economy is shrinking, demand for durable, big-ticket manufactured goods is plunging and wages are virtually flat.
But here in the corridors of power of the nation’s capital it’s being shrugged off as yesterday’s old complaints. The liberal network news shows are ignoring it altogether. And President Obama, well, he’s focusing on climate change and other issues that don’t even make the top 10 list of the voters’ chief concerns.
This week, Mr. Obama’s Commerce Department issued its second estimate of how the economy performed in the first three months of this year, announcing again that it had not just stopped growing, but was declining.
After tinkering with its numbers with what they said was fresh economic data, the government changed its original assessment of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) — the broadest measure of our economy.
The economy did a little better than its first calculation of minus 0.7 percent. Instead, it had only shrunk by minus 0.2 percent. Why? People were spending less. Exports were down. Businesses were reluctant to invest in expansion. Retail sales were lackluster. The U.S. economy wasn’t just anemic, it was contracting.
Did you see any comprehensive reports about this on Scott Pelley’s CBS News broadcast? Or NBC? Or ABC? I didn’t think so.
What’s happening is the opposite of the age-old question: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
In the age of Obama, if the economy is receding in the seventh year of its trickle-down recovery, does the liberal, pro-Obama news media want to report it?
The blunt answer to that question should be painfully obvious by now. If a Republican were in the White House and presiding over this economy, the nightly news shows would be running daily stories about it, raising appropriate questions that would put the blame on the administration’s policies.
But not with Mr. Obama. Seven years into his painfully slow economy, with all that is wrong with his policies, he has gotten off scot-free. Go back and run the tape on all the networks’ economic stories, and you won’t hear Mr. Obama’s policies mentioned in any of them.
It’s as if the economy is on one planet and Mr. Obama is on another, and never the twain shall meet.
But now comes the news that Mr. Obama’s administration is planning to change its policies in the face of all these bad economic numbers. It won’t be its actual economic policies, but how the economic data can be finagled to improve the numbers.
Here’s how Forbes magazine’s website reported what the White House was up to:
“And last week we had the news that the people who calculate GDP are about to change the way in which it is measured so as to not report first-quarter GDP as falling.”
But it isn’t just the shocking first-quarter numbers in the nation’s GDP. Mr. Obama’s economy has been turning in very anemic economic growth numbers for much if not most of his tenure.
The economy was already slowing down in the fourth quarter of last year, with the GDP increasing by just 2.2 percent, a very mediocre growth rate no matter how you slice it.
Economists are already forecasting second-quarter growth at a sickly 1 to 2 percent. “Still, that would leave growth in the first half [of this year] at a weak 1.2 percent annual rate,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
And many forecasters are saying the Obama economy will not do much better than that for the rest of this year, or possibly into next year as well.
This week, the government reported that orders for durable, or big-ticket manufacturer goods plunged in May, after a huge downward revision in April — falling for the third time in four months.
The consensus estimate for May was minus 0.6 percent, but the actual number came in at a minus 1.8 percent. The huge revision for April scaled back durable orders demand from minus 0.5 percent to a dismal minus 1.5 percent.
Meantime, retail sales were flat in April and continued to be slow as shoppers kept a tight grip on their wallets.
Notably, consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of our entire economy, has been slowing since last summer, despite the decline in gas prices, which was supposed to give the economy a big boost. That obviously hasn’t happened to the degree the administration hoped it would.
Earlier this year, House Republicans responded to the White House report on the economy that made it appear it was in robust health and growing stronger every year.
That isn’t what the relevant economic numbers show, nor what millions of ordinary Americans are feeling when they tell pollsters that the economy and jobs are their chief concern.
In their response on Feb. 19, GOP lawmakers said, “We give his report an ’F.’ “
“The president continues to argue that more spending and more government regulation will help the middle class, and insists on blocking the spending cuts Americans so desperately need,” the House Republicans said.
“If the president’s approach had worked, why would we be in the middle of one of the slowest recoveries in history? Would we still be missing 5.5 million private-sector jobs? Would Americans still be struggling under stagnant wages?”
This week the Gallup Poll asked Americans to “name the most negative aspect of the economy.” Jobs and the economy were at the top of the list of more than two-dozen issues. Low wages were not far behind.
While the news media is ignoring the sluggish Obama economy, legions of struggling Americans are not. The Democrats, and Hillary Clinton are going to be hearing from them loud and clear in 2016.
• Donald Lambro is a syndicated columnist and contributor to The Washington Times.
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