He should say it even more forcefully. We were on the verge another Great Depression. The President and the Congress averted it, while the Republicans claimed that the economy was doing swell. The President and the Democrats need to remind people of this fact every day.
“Today, we are heading in the right direction,” Obama said. “Those tough steps we took — they’re working. Despite all the naysayers — who were predicting failure a year ago — our economy is growing again.”Standing in front of heavy equipment in a manufacturing bay at a company that has added workers, Obama said his critics should have to admit that the steps he took — and they opposed — ended the recession and have begun to add jobs, if slowly.
“I knew that if we didn’t act boldly and quickly — if we didn’t defy the politics of the moment and do what was necessary — we would have risked an even greater disaster,” he said, calling out the Republican Party as having been “in power when the crisis happened.”
And kudos for singling out the GOP. That’s something Obama doesn’t like doing, but, since health care reform, he’s started to do more often.
Democrats in Congress need to echo the same sentiment. Wasted stimulus? Ha! We saved the economy from a Depression that most assuredly would have happened had the GOP been in power. Dems should own the stimulus, the same way they should own health care reform. Talk about the benefits of each until you’re blue in the face.
