Man, things must be really, really bad right now in this country. Honestly, to hear them tell it, we're all eating cold beans straight from the can with our bare fingers. And we had to open the can with a pair of blunt scissors.It's as if we are suffering through human misery of Biblical proportions.
I suppose it's politically advantageous for the Dems to paint a horrible picture of the U.S. economy, but are things really that bad?
Let's take a little economic snapshot.
The U.S. economy grew - yes, that's right, you heard right, I said grew - at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent last quarter.
That number outpaced last month's forecasts by the Commerce Department, which was a more meager 1.9 percent.
The 3.3 percent increase also outpaced the average Wall Street estimate of 2.7 percent and showed a strong acceleration from the 0.9 percent growth rate during the first three months of the year.
Consumer spending was up 1.7 percent, only 0.2 percent off of previous estimates.
Personal income: Jan. - $11.9 trillion; July - $12.2 trillion.
Unemployment rate: July 07 - 4.7 percent; July 08 - 5.7 percent.
Average weekly hours worked: July 07 - 33.8; July 08 - 33.6
Average hourly earnings: July 07 - $17.47; July 08 - 18.06.
Producer price index: up 1.8 percent in July (food, 1.5 percent; other, 2.5 percent).
Consumer price index: up a seasonally adjusted 1.1 percent in June.
Now, this is not to say we are in the midst of a huge economic expansion or anything, but things certainly aren't as bad as the Dems would have us believe.
Food and fuel prices are rising and there is a mortgage crisis going on, to be sure.
But some of the stuff I heard was bordering on delusional.
V.P. selection Joe Biden:
'Ladies and gentlemen, the American dream feels like it's slowly slipping away. ... I've never seen a time when Washington has watched so many people get knocked down without doing anything to help them get back up.'
O.K., where was Biden when Congress was handing out $170 billion in stimulus checks?
And where was he when Congress passed the prescription drug benefit? That may turn out to be the biggest entitlement program in the history of U.S. government.
As a conservative, I was against government handouts like these, but you would think a liberal like Biden would have been thrilled.
Better to be disingenuous than honest, I suppose.
I am so tired of hearing Democrats talk about John McCain's "$4 billion dollar tax break to the oil companies."
What John McCain really wants to do is lower the corporate tax rate to make U.S. companies more competitive in the world market.
This would, in turn, make it less less likely that U.S. companies would outsource jobs overseas.
Of course, since oil companies pay corporate taxes, they would benefit from McCain's plan, but no more or less than any other corporation in America.
The Dems make it sound like the plan is aimed only at the oil companies.
Meanwhile, recent polls suggest that Americans generally aren't as bummed out as the Democrats would like us to be.
Forty-eight percent of Americans say that they are completely satisfied with their job, the second highest Gallup has measured during this decade.
A recent Harris poll showed that 76 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction and 53 percent believe their state is off track.
Yet in a stunning paradox, three-quarters of Americans (76 percent) say things in their personal lives are going in the right direction. Only one in five (20 percent) say they have gone off track.
The problem with all this misdirection is that the Dems use this stuff to justify failed economic and tax policy.
Barack Obama talks about rolling back the W tax cuts.
That's a dumb idea.
Look at the chart on this page. Look what happened after W enacted his tax cuts in 2003. Receipts to the treasury skyrocketed to record levels.
That's because tax cuts affect the economy. People make more money and pay more taxes. Corporations make more money and pay more taxes.
Of course, fueled by government handouts like the prescription drug benefit and the stimulus checks and all manner of other programs, the government spent all the record revenue and then some.
The result? Deficits.
Any fool can see the problem is not that we pay too little in taxes. The problem is that government spends too much.
Comes now Obama who wants to roll back the tax cuts - likely decreasing revenue to the treasury - and simultaneously give us huge new entitlements like health care and education programs.
Imagine what that will do to the budget.
I just hope most Americans are smart enough to see this stuff for what it is.
