Romney offers prosperity for U.S. economy

Charles Wilson
Guest Columnist

With the imminent presidential election, the economy remains the number one issue on voters’ minds. President Barack Obama would have them believe he pulled back the economy from the abyss after the financial crisis of 2008, and that we’re now on a forward path because of his policies.

The problem with this story is that it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Almost every broad-based measurement of economic well-being shows stagnation or decline over his term. Given this, voters should look toward the Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney; who will lead this country toward economic revival.

For starters, look at the job market.

23 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work. The only reason the unemployment rate declined from its recessionary peak of 10 percent to its current level of 8.1 percent is because millions of Americans dropped out of the labor force.

Since the unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the amount of people unemployed by the labor force, all it takes for the unemployment rate to drop is for individuals to become discouraged and stop registering their unemployed status to the government.

Instead of finding a job, millions of Americans have found it more convenient to live off the current administration’s expansion of the social safety net.

There have been 4.5 million private sector jobs added over the past two and a half years that Obama prefers to talk about. But compared to other recoveries after a severe recession, 4.5 million jobs is disappointing to say the least. If this jobs recovery had kept up with the pace of the Reagan recovery, roughly 7.5 million more people would have jobs. Based on the past 20 years of job growth; our economy is currently 13 million jobs below its trend line.

As mentioned above, Reagan’s program brought in a windfall of jobs, 21 million jobs during the entirety of the ’80s growth period, to be exact. The Romney program takes what worked under Reagan and applies it to today’s dismal economy.

For instance, Romney’s plan to slash the corporate tax rate, clean up the individual income tax, and streamline overzealous regulations mimics the Reagan approach. This is why Romney’s top economic adviser, Glenn Hubbard, believes a Romney first term could very well generate 12 million new jobs. And not just jobs, but high paying jobs that are full-time. A Romney recovery will be a vast improvement from what we are getting from Obama.

On top of that, a recent study by the National Employment Law Project shows most of the jobs lost during the recession were middle-class jobs, while majority of the new jobs are lower class. In other words, not only have the quantity of jobs added under Obama undershot expectations, but they have also suffered in quality.

Given the dismal state of job and income growth, it’s no surprise that household incomes have actually fallen more during the so-called recovery than the actual recession. Under the latest estimations, household incomes fell 2.6 percent during the recessionary years and by 4.8 percent since.

All that aside, the sovereign debt crisis this country faces is nothing short of scary. European countries such as Greece and Spain can attest to that. The current administration’s appetite for debt-fueled government spending in the name of stimulus and wealth redistribution may be the final straw that breaks the back of our economy, equalizing us with the debt-ridden, depressed economies of Europe.

Since taking office, the Obama administration has run four consecutive trillion dollar deficits, increasing the national debt by $5.6 trillion in less than four years. The national debt as a percentage of GDP, which measures our liabilities against assets, has risen from an already too high rate of 70 percent when Obama took office, to a whopping 100 percent. Under current budget projections, this ratio only worsens under a second Obama term, as the national debt continues to grow faster than the economy.

Fortunately, Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, has laid out a path to prosperity that slows down the rate of government spending, reducing government outlays and debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. This country’s sovereign debt crisis can be averted if Ryan’s path to prosperity that Romney endorses is fully implemented. Putting government back on the sideline so the private sector economy can once again thrive is necessary, as it is the only way out of  our economic malaise.

In short, economic statistics clearly state that the U.S. economy has stagnated under the current administration’s policies. America’s economy faces financial ruin in the near future if we don’t change course.

Ultimately, voters will decide whether we stay with the status quo or turn a corner and select Mitt Romney to foster the prosperity that this country is used to.