Income falls 3.2% during Obama's term
Chief Egalitarian
Income falls 3.2% during Obama's term
By Joseph Curl
Real personal income for Americans - excluding government payouts such as
Social Security - has fallen by 3.2 percent since President Obama took
office in January 2009, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of
Economic Analysis.
For comparison, real personal income during the first 15 months in office
for President George W. Bush, who inherited a milder recession from his
predecessor, dropped 0.4 percent. Income excluding government payouts
increased 12.7 percent during Mr. Bush's eight years in office.
"This is hardly surprising," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and
former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "Under
President Obama, only federal spending is going up; jobs, business startups,
and incomes are all down. It is proof that the government can't spend its
way to prosperity."
According to the bureau's statistics, per capita income dropped during 2009
in 47 states, with only modest gains in the other states, West Virginia,
Maine and Maryland. But most of those increases were attributed to rising
income from the government, such as Medicare and unemployment benefits.
Two of the most populous states in the country reported dramatic declines:
Per capita income in California dropped 3.5 percent to $42,325; in New York,
the drop was 3.8 percent to $46,957.
"The evidence from New York and California reinforces a basic lesson: Where
government gets too large, prosperity suffers. Let's hope that the Congress
learns this lesson before it is too late for the country as a whole," said
Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who also served as chief economic policy adviser to Sen.
John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama often derided Mr. Bush for what he said
were dramatically falling incomes for workers.
"American families, since George Bush has been in office, have seen average
family incomes go down $2,000," Mr. Obama said in a September 2008 speech on
the economy in Green Bay, Wis.
The bureau, which doesn't compile statistics on "family" income, reported
that per capita income rose during Mr. Bush's two terms, from $29,159 to
$32,632 (using 2005 dollar values as a base). During Mr. Obama's 15 months
in office, per capita income has dropped nearly 1 percent to $32,343.