Dear President Obama,

 

Greetings from the great state of West Virginia!

Mr. President, last week in an interview with The Economist, you boasted to the American people the economy is better now than when you took office saying, “Since I have come into office, there’s almost no economic metric by which you couldn’t say that the U.S. economy is better and that corporate bottom lines are better – None.”

Well, Mr. President, I’m not sure what metrics apply in Washington, but as for the rest of the country, things have never been tougher.

Sadly, throughout your presidency, the complicit liberal media has refused to engage you with direct questions aimed at getting honest answers.

So if you’ll indulge me, Mr. President, I would like to pose a few simple questions.

Mr. President, our nation’s labor participation force is the lowest it’s been since the mid-1970s. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a record 94 million Americans are missing from the labor force. During the same period of time in 2008, the number was 79 million Americans. How do you explain this tragic drop in employment?

President Obama, as you know, individuals who haven’t actively looked for work for four weeks are dropped from the monthly reported unemployment rate. Given the record number of Americans not looking for work and missing from the labor force, don’t you feel it’s misleading to report unemployment at below 5 percent?

Mr. President, following the Bush presidency, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were 28.2 million people on food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Yet, according to recent SNAP statistics, this number has increased to over 44 million people. How do you explain so many more people now dependent upon the government for food?

Mr. President, in recent weeks, you’ve used the word “booming” to describe certain segments of our economy. Yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income has dropped from $55,313 in 2008 when you took office to $53,657 in 2014. When factoring price increases, the median household income becomes comparable to levels we haven’t seen since the mid-1990s. What words do you have for families not feeling the “boom” in the economy?

In 2008, Mr. President, when you were running for office, you criticized then-President Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt, saying it was “unpatriotic” and “irresponsible” to burden future generations with such a large national debt.

Yet, since taking office in 2009, your administration has added another $7.5 trillion, according to multiple sources, including The Weekly Standard. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office predicts the debt could exceed $19 trillion by the end of your presidency. Would you now “walk back” your 2009 indictment of Bush?

“Metrics” are only as good as the data, Mr. President. And yours fail to meet the mark.

But if you’re looking for a good accountant to honestly track the information, give us a call here in West Virginia.

We have plenty of people who could use the work.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.