04.28.16

Obama Administration M.I.A. as Economy Posts Record Slow Growth

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) took to the Senate floor today to highlight yet another quarter of sluggish growth for the American economy. The Commerce Department today announced that the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew by only 0.5 percent during the first quarter of 2016. Under President Obama’s administration, GDP – a key indicator of the nation’s economic growth – has yet to hit three percent. Prior to the Obama administration, the longest stretch of time in which real GDP has not grown by at least 3 percent was a four-year period during the Great Depression.

“In the old days, whether it was a Republican or a Democratic administration, if the U.S. economy was growing 0.5 percent – essentially not growing – then almost certainly the secretary of the treasury would have come out and said, ‘Don’t worry America. We’ve got this. We have a plan. We know that 0.5 percent GDP is horrible for everyone, especially working class families,’” Senator Sullivan said on the Senate floor today. “Or the secretary of commerce would have come out saying, ‘We know you’re hurting, America. We’ve got a plan.’ But I don’t think we heard a peep out of this administration this morning. They certainly don’t want the American people talking about it because it’s a big problem for them. It’s a big problem for all of us. Growing our economy has to be the number one moral imperative we should be focused on.”

FACTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

  • During the last ten years, real annual growth in GDP peaked in 2006 at 2.7 percent. It has never been that high since, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

  • In the 25 quarters since the recession ended in 2009, real GDP has grown a total of 14.3 percent, which equals an anemic annual growth rate of slightly less than 2.2 percent over the course of the recovery.
  • By comparison, for other recoveries since 1960 that lasted longer than one year, real GDP has on average grown by a total of 27 percent over a comparable period, or an average annual rate of 3.9 percent.

  • If real GDP had grown at the average rate of other recoveries during the Obama recovery, real GDP would be $1.823 trillion higher. Compared with the average of other recoveries since 1960, cumulative lost real GDP amounts to $6.991 trillion.

  • In the Reagan recovery, real GDP grew a total of 34 percent over the comparable period—an annual rate of 4.8 percent.
  • If the economy had grown at the rate of the Reagan recovery, real GDP would be $2.816 trillion higher. Compared with the Reagan recovery, cumulative lost real GDP amounts to $10.644 trillion.  

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