(June 27, 2016) Hillary Clinton has been saying that the US economy does much better when a Democrat is president than when a Republican is. When the press goes to fact-check the claim, they can be forgiven for having a presumption that it can’t be 100 per cent true. After all, if it were completely true, then wouldn’t we all already know it?
Well, there is no other way to say this: The claim is 100 per cent true.
This morning’s US employment report shows that July was the 34th consecutive month of job increases. Earlier in the week, the Commerce Department report showed that the 2nd quarter was the 16th consecutive quarter of positive GDP growth. Of course, the growth rates in employment and income have not been anywhere near as strong as we would like, nor as strong as they could be if we had a more intelligent fiscal policy in Washington. But the US economy is doing much better than what most other industrialized countries have been experiencing. Many European countries haven’t even recovered from the Great Recession, with GDPs currently still below their peaks of six years ago.