George F. Will:
It is said that the problem with the younger generation — any younger generation — is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting. Barack Obama, forever young, has convenient memory loss: It serves his ideology. His amnesia concerning the policies that produced the robust recovery from the more severe recession of 1981-82 has produced policies that have resulted in 0.1 percent economic growth in 2014’s first quarter.
June begins the sixth year of the anemic recovery from an 18-month recession. Even if what Obama’s administration calls “historically severe” weather — aka, winter — reduced GDP growth by up to 1.4 percentage points, growth of 1.5 percent would still be grotesque.
The reason unemployment fell by four-tenths of a point (to 6.3 percent) in April while growth stalled is that 806,000 people left the labor force. There are about 14.5 million more Americans than before the recession but nearly 300,000 fewer jobs, and household income remains below the pre-recession peak.
Paul Volcker, whose nomination to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was Jimmy Carter’s best presidential decision, raised interest rates to put the nation through a recession to extinguish the inflation that, combined with stagnant growth, ruined Carter’s presidency. Then came the 1983-88 expansion, when growth averaged 4.6 percent, including five quarters over 7 percent.
Ronald Reagan lightened the weight of government as measured by taxation and regulation. Obama has done the opposite. According to Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, four of the five largest yearly totals of pages in the Federal Register — the record of regulations — have occurred during the Obama administration. The CEI’s “unconstitutionality index,” measuring Congress’ delegation of its lawmaking policy, was 51 in 2013. This means Congress passed 72 laws but unelected bureaucrats issued 3,659 regulations.