Obama’s Economy Needs Pro-Growth Policies

• Americans should look at annual economic growth to see how the economy is doing.

• President Obama’s annual economic growth is historically poor. In the last 65 years, his five years of growth since 2009 rank 45th, 46th, 47th, 48th and 54th.

Today the Bureau of Economic Analysis released GDP numbers for the fourth quarter of 2014 and for the full year of 2014. Inflation-adjusted GDP increased by 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, below expectations of about three percent growth. 

Three months ago, the Obama administration had hyped the good news that third quarter growth in 2014 was five percent. Annual growth is where Americans should focus their attention, and that number was only 2.4 percent for all of 2014. This is an increase from annual growth of 2.2 percent in 2013, but compared to other presidents Obama’s record of economic growth has been poor.

Economic growth in the Obama years has been much worse than average. When sorting the 65 years from 1950 through 2014, the Obama years rank 45th, 46th, 47th, 48th, and 54th. The Obama 2009 economy – half of which was during the recession – was dead last at number 65.

Comparing the Obama economic record to President Reagan’s recovery in 1982 and the recovery from the early 1990s recession shows a similar result.

A couple of quarters of good GDP growth do not add up to a recovery. President Obama’s economic record shows that his ideas continue to underperform. The president should join with Republicans in Congress to craft pro-growth policies that encourage jobs and investment while preventing debt from harming our economy in the future.