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• Prizes paid for by the Steven Stoft, the owner of zFacts.com.

• Lost $10 trillion in stock value: half of our stock-market savings. Stocks were falling 9% per month.
• Lost $7 trillion in home values: almost 1/3 the value of our homes.
• Lost 630,000 auto-industry jobs. At the rate jobs were vanishing in Bush's last month, all jobs would have been lost in less than two years.
• Run up over 1.1 trillion in debt in the past 6 months, the fastest rate ever.
• Lost 4,662,000 jobs, and were losing jobs at the rate of 10 million per year.

Remember this: the economy was not just horrible, it was getting worse on all fronts, and the speed of collapse was increasing. So things were bound to get worse while Obama slowed, then stopped, the destruction of jobs and values.

• In 4 weeks (by Feb. 17), he passed and signed the biggest jobs bill ever.
• Three weeks later (March 10) stocks rebounded, and have more than doubled in value from their low point.
• Job losses slowed in February, and came to a stop in record time.
• Obama saved the auto industry in June, with an unprecidented 10-day managed and supported bankruptcy.
• The next month, auto-industry employment started up, and kept going up with the US auto industry gaining market share for the first time in 23 years.

The key point: Starting in 2011, Republicans blocked Obama’s jobs bills because they knew the programs would work. Had they thought the programs wouldn't work, letting them pass would have proved their point and helped them defeat Obama. They prolonged the recession to stop his success, not to prevent his failure.

• Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, declared, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” (October 2010). He got a lot of bad press for that.
• So Sean Hannity of Fox News gave him a chance to take back his implication — that he wanted a sour economy to defeat Obama. (July 2011)
• Hannity repeated McConnell’s 2010 quote, adding that Democrats were saying “Republicans want a sour economy, bad economic numbers.” He then asked "So how do you respond to that Democratic line of attack?"
• McConnell’s response: “Well, that is true. That’s my single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country.”
• The clincher: Rather than deny the charge that Republicans actually want a “sour economy” and “bad economic numbers,” he doubled down on it.
• As the highest ranking Republican official, and with eight months to think about it, who can doubt him?

• Here's the Fox News video.
• Why didn't McConnell deny the horrendous charge that Republicans want a "sour economy?"
• Because he'd been thinking it was a good thing for years, and consequently, hearing it raised no red flags in his mind.
• There's really no other explanation. If someone charged you with wanting to keep the American economy in bad shape, would you fail to respond? And how much more defensive would a top politician be if they were really trying to fix the economy?
• This charge could only slip past him because he'd spent years thinking that a sour economy was a wonderful thing — because it would defeat Obama.
• In July 2012, the National Journal gave McConnell another chance to retract his October 2010 quote, and again McConnell refused.

• Their first step was to attack Obama (not the nation's problems) by passing an anti-health-care bill they knew would do nothing.
• They did this 33 more times, as of August 2, 2012.
• They tried to shut down the government just to make a political point.
• Their point was "too much debt" after Bush set the record of $1.1 trillion in 100 days, and Obama had slowed it.
• The shut-down fiasco prevented action on the economy for half a year.
• They passed a budget they knew would fail, again to score political points.
• It was irrelevant to the crisis, calling for voucher-care and a fast-track to be used to cut Social Security.
• They blocked Obama's jobs bills.

• Their first day in office: The Tea Party-controlled House started voting to repeal parts, or all, of the Affordable Care Act, on January 19, 2011.
• Their 34th vote to repeal was August 2, 2012.
• Boehner says “Hope springs eternal," but you know it's just political highjinks since the repeal can't pass the Senate, and Obama would veto it.

• 2.6 times as many jobs per year were created under Democrats over the last 63 years.
• For 83 years. If you look back to 1929, the up-down rule has held 9 times in a row — no exceptions.
• Now Republican behavior is worse. Since Obama got in, Republicans have been trying to stop job creation to thwart Obama. Talk about unpatriotic politics.

• Why budget years? In January 2009, Bush was losing jobs at the rate of 10 million/year. There is no way Obama could make the economy stop laying off workers and start hiring in February, 2009. He had no magic wand.
      He had little control until eight months later when Bush's last budget year ended (Sept. 30). In fact, when Bush faced job losses of only 4 million/year back in 2001, it took him 21 months to stop them. So giving Obama only eight months is exceptionally stingy.
• What if we use Presidential Years? Blaming Obama for Bush's job losses from Obama's first day certainly hurts his record, but even then, Obama scores a net gain, and Bush scores a net loss. And over the 63 years, Republicans still created less than half the jobs per year that Democrats did.

• When Romney calculates his jobs record in MA, he does not count the losses at the beginning of his term — he only does that for Obama.
• Obama's stimulus worked fast. Lay-offs were slowed in anticipation of stimulus funds. The bill was signed in only 4 weeks. The graph shows what happened.
• It took just 13 months for Obama to stop the job losses running at 10 million a year. Compare that to 21 months for G.W. Bush, to stop the job losses running at only 4 million/year in 2001.
• Over 5.2 million jobs have been added since Obama stopped the losses (3/10 – 9/12). This brought the unemployment rate down from 10% to 7.8%.

• No, these are not government jobs. Those have declined slightly, and they are not included.
• Here's why Obama could not stop job losses instantly as Romney says he should have —
• The runaway job-loss train accelerated under Bush to a rate of 10 million a year. Obama began slowing that train in his very first month, but it took 12 more months to stop the train and turn it around to adding jobs.
• You can't stop a train on a dime. But Obama took only 13 months to stop losses that were running at the rate of 10 million a year, while Bush took 21 months to stop losses that peaked at only 4.4 million a year. See graph.
• Obama put the brakes on the runaway train almost four times as hard as Bush did. That's phenomenal.

• Detroit was in freefall when Obama took office. See graph.
• Another Great Depression could have resulted.
• The 10-day assisted bankruptcy engineered by Obama was the fastest big bankruptcy ever.
• It worked! It stopped the collapse instantly (see graph). The auto industry rebounded, and the made-in-the-US market share increased for the first time in 23 years.

• Obama rescued the auto industry with Bush's TARP (bank-bailout) money.
• It looks like this will cost about $30 billion, which is the same amount as Bush spent on AIG, the bad-debt insurance company most reponsible for the financial crisis that almost killed the auto industry.
• Romney wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times, saying nothing should have been done — just let them go bankrupt and try to restructure. Bankruptcies are one way his company made money, but this was not the time to take chances.
• The auto industry rescue also rescued between one and two million American families from the damage caused by the Wall Street meltdown.

• Gasoline averaged $3.06 under Obama and $2.72 under Bush. That's a 12.6% increase, or 3.2% per year.
• Drilling for oil (more supply) helps keep the price down, just like a better economy makes it go up.
• Obama has presided over the biggest oil-drilling boom ever. And it worked
• The price of gas went up anyway, because it is set by the world market, and Big Oil is exporting gasoline to China.
• Big Oil is making a killing. That's why the oil companies and their politicians want more drilling.
• It's not because Big Oil wants to bring the price of gas down. Are you kidding?!

• Obama did not cause the drilling, but contrary to Republicans, he let the market work.
• Although there were more oil rigs in operation in the early 1980s, they were not able to drill as fast or accurately, so this is the biggest oil-drilling boom ever.
• The data is from Baker Hughes, one of the biggest suppliers of drilling equipment.

• The biggest jump in oil production since 1970. It all happened under Obama.
• But the gas prices went up at the same time oil supply went up.
• Why? Becuase of world demand — China, Japan & Europe.

• If we kept the gasoline in the US, the price would drop like a rock.
• Never: Oil Companies will NEVER do that.
• Big Oil will always sell at the world price — never cheaper.
• Only a tiny bit lower: That's the effect of drill, baby, drill on the price of gas, because Exxon and BP sell it to the world.
• If we harm our own environment when drilling, remember, we're doing it for other countries and Big Oil profits.

• China is even more addicted to oil than the US and Japan is now using oil for electricity in place of some of its nuclear power.
• It would make more sense to save more of our oil for our future rather than run out early while making it easier for China, Japan and Europe to buy more and use our oil to outcompete us.

• From economic peak to peak: from 1979 to 2007 —
• A top-1% family gained 344 times more than a bottom-20% family.
• And 62 times more than a middle-income family (not 62% more).
• That's how "trickle down" "works." That's the Republican philosophy ...
• Help the rich (they call them "job-creators") and let their wealth trickle down to us. How's that been going?

• Data is from the Congressional Budget Office. The study compares two economic peaks to avoid biases caused by the business cycle.
• Republicans like to talk about "class warfare." War or not, the upper class has been winning — more accurately, a few super-rich conservatives, like the Koch brothers, are trouncing the middle class with their PACs and lobbyists.
• Since 1979, taxes on the richest have been cut in half.
• Since 2007, the rich lost some wealth and regained most of it, but this is about income and their income has recovered even better. But the CBO is right to measure the trend from peak to peak. It would be unfair to go peak to trough (a lowball estimate) or trough to peak (a high-ball estimate).
• Romney, whose net worth is over $200M, made $21.6 million in 2010 and pays less (13% in 2010) than the middle class.
• But, more importantly, the "job creators" are outsourcing America's jobs to China and India.

1. In the second debate, he explained that "not reduce" means their share will stay the same.
2. Say the rich now get 15% of all income and have a tax rate of 20%.
3. Say they get richer and capture 30% of all income.
4. At the same 20% tax rate, they would pay twice as much in taxes.
5. So Romney promises to keep their "tax share" the same.
6. That means cutting their tax rate from 20% to 10%.

In fact the top 1% did double it's share of income from 10% to 20%. And it is paying more taxes. The rich have been complaining about this, and Romney is taking care of them.

Wouldn't you like to know that if you get richer your tax bill will stay the same?
Notes & FAQs Below
• Romney is talking about the top 5%, not the top 1%, so the increase in income share will be less.
• In the first debate Romney said: "I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. ... I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. ...I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans."
• In the second debate Romney said: "The top 5 percent of taxpayers will continue to pay 60 percent of the income tax the nation collects. So that'll stay the same. ... The top 5 percent will continue to pay 60 percent, as they do today."
• According to the Supplemental data to Congressional Budget Office, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 (October 2011), the income share of the
• This point made in the Christian Science Monitor

• What would have happened if Reagan and the Bushes had balanced their budgets?
• $13 trillion dollars less debt! The green line shows what the National Debt would look like without the Republican borrow-and-spend policy. It would have been minimal.
• Starting with Reagan Republicans grew the debt faster than the economy 20 out of 20 budget years.
• Before Reagan there was no problem. Both parties reduced the debt compared to the economy.
• Democrats have continued that bipartisan tradition.
• Obama is doing what Clinton did with the deficit. Clinton took 3 years to reverse a far smaller deficit.

• To check the 20-out-of-20 record, note that the red (Republican-since-Reagan) lines always go up, while before Reagan, both parties usually brought the debt down compared to the economy (GDP). In any way that matters, the debt was the smallest in 50 years before Reagan wrecked decades of fiscal competence.
• No, Reagan's debt was not due to the Democratic Congress. In 3 out of the 4 years that Reagan did face a Democratic Congress, they passed smaller budgets than Reagan requested. In his 8 years, Congressional budgets were smaller than Reagan requested by a total of $16 billion.
• These data can be found in any Economic Report of the President, or OMB budget. Up through Bush the numbers can be plotted directly from Bush White House OMB reports.
• See http://zfacts.com/p/57.html for more details and documentation.

• Bush doubled the gross deficit in FY 2008
• He doubled it again in his 2009 budget year which started Oct. 1, 2008.
• The all-time deficit record: Bush set it with a rate of nearly $2 trillion a year with his TARP Bank bailout.
• It's down, under Obama: In spite of significant Jobs Stimulus in FY 2010, the deficit has come down.

• Bush set two debt records —
• Bush's 100-day record of $1.1 trillion was set from July 30, 2008 to Nov. 7, 2008, when the debt was increasing at the rate of $4 trillion per year!
• Bush's 2009 budget-year record began Oct. 1, 2008, and was $1.885 trillion.
• No, that was not due to Obama's job stimulus. The fastest debt increase in Bush's year was under Bush, and stimulus spending started so slowly that it was only $0.035 trillion during Bush's last budget year.
• The deficit is not the debt. The deficit is how fast the debt is growing.
• The deficit shown above is the "Gross National Deficit, the annual increase in the Gross National Debt, which is the bigger measure of debt and the one that Republicans most often cite.
• The data for this graph comes from from the Treasury's "debt to the penny" page. This is the data used by Republicans to find the national debt.

• The recession is the main cause of the increased deficit.
• It causes reduced tax collections — especialy from business, and more automatic spending on unemployment insurance, food stamps, and social security.
• That's why it went up under Bush and is comming down under Obama.

• Fiscal (budget) Year 2009, was set up by Bush in 2008, and before Obama took office. Democrats had almost no effect on it, because Bush vetoed the main spending bill (fo child health care) that they passed.
• In January, before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office predicted the huge deficit that actually occured. It was not caused by Obama.
• Obama did spend about $30 billion with his Jobs Stimulus bill during FY 2009, and about $30 billion on the auto industry bailouts. But this is less than one tenth of the deficit.
• This graph uses the standard deficit, which increases when social security payments go up. This data is from the Congressional Budget Office.

• In 1982 the Trust Fudn ran completely out twice! It had to borrow a little money both times.
• But it did not miss a single benefit payment.
• Romney supports benefit cuts. He supports Paul Ryan's budget, which forces immediate action to "fix" social security for the next 75 years.
• The cuts would be fast-tracked through Congress, something that is now illegal.
• Social Security is in the best shape it's ever been in. Yes, eventually it will need adjusting — it's always been like that.

• Stocks have gained 17% a year (15% adjusting for inflation) since Obama took office.
• That's huge and more than twice as good a Reagan. (See graph.)
• Almost $10 trillion: the market has regained most of the $10 trillion it lost under Bush.

• That stock market gains show business confidence in the future is a standard view of business and economics, and Republicans agree.

• Obama has done best with raising business confidence as shown by stock prices gaining 15% per year on top of inflation.
• G.W. Bush lost 8.5% per year for eigth years. For seven years the Republicans said he was great.
• Reagan managed only 6.1% per year. OK, but not great.

• These values have all been adjusted for inflation. But even giving Reagan credit for his high inflationary gains, Obama wins 17% to 10%.

• Romney is a "private equity" capitalist — the opposite of a venture capitalist. Like Perry said, their job is buying up old companies and sometimes "picking their bones clean." See this in action in this amazing video. They don't start new companies (new ventures).
• "Romney founded one of America's leading private equity firms." (Bloomberg—financial news)
• That's why Romney pretends to be a venture capitalist. If private-equity capitalists were the ones making new jobs instead of "sometimes by closing facilities and sending operations overseas" (Bloomberg.com), he wouldn't be hiding what he is.
• Bain Capital is 96.7% private equity ("vulture") and 3.3% venture capital according to Reuters ($2 billion out of $60 billion).
• Perry is right, Romney was mainly NOT a job creator.
• Reagan's budget director explains that Romney is not a venture capitalis or a job creator.

• Paul Ryan put these same cost cuts in his own budget, and all the House Republicans voted for them. When asked, Ryan agreed this was so. See for yourself.
• Romney must know he's lying and is saying this to deceive the American public, particularly the elderly. And Ryan can't possibly believe him.
• Neither do the fact checkers at PolitiFact, the Christian Science Monitor or anywhere else.
• Paul Ryan was sitting right next to Romney when he lied on 60 Minutes and CBS.
• Finally, after months of lying and getting caught, Romney changed his tune in the presidential debate.
• Now he admits that 85% of the $716 billion comes from “not overpaying hospitals and providers” (he left out insurance companies). But he worries because 15% of these companies say the cuts are too much. What kind of businessman doesn't know companies try to bluff the government? And why should we subsidize the most expensive 15%?

• Hospitals actually agreed to the cost cuts that Romney wants to give back, because they knew they would get more business under Obamacare.
• A third of the cost cuts come from Medicare Advantage providers that are known to be over-charging by 17%.

• Down since Obama took office: Compared to population, Federal employment is down.
• Republicans said "up and out of control." That was just temporary census hiring, and they knew it.
• This was just a scare tactic.

• The "Big Government" scare is just wrong. The only noticeable permanent growth is Obama's Affordable Care Act that covers Americans left out by employer plans and private insurance companies. This requires very few federal employees, and it's coupled with Medicare cost-savings that pay for it.

1. Obama "robbed" Medicare. —Romney No, he cut Medicare costs.

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2. Obama caused huge job losses. —Romney No, Obama stopped Bush's losses quickly.

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3. Romney is a venture capitalist. —Romney No, Bain doesn't start new companies.

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4. Obama doubled gasoline prices. —Romney No, drilling and oil production are way up.

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5. Obama gave GM to the UAW. —Romney No, he saved GM, and got little.

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1. Which party has created jobs twice as fast? Actually, more than twice

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2. Who set the record of $1 trillion in 100 days? Actually, $1.1 trillion

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3. Who gets the “Drill-Baby-Drill” prize? Not Sarah P.

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4. Who improved business confidence most? So they call him a socialist

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5. When was Social Security richest? And they say it's bankrupt

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• Mayor Bloomberg, the billionaire Republican turned independent, endorsed Obama because of climate change, and "a woman’s right to choose."
• Former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell, endorsed Obama because he brought "stabilization" to a "fiscal system [that] was collapsing," and now "we're starting to gain altitude." Also he finds that Romney is flip-flopping on Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Gov. Christie, now that he's worked with Obama, says the president has been "outstanding," "incredibly supportive" and "deserves great credit." Remember that Christie gave the keynote address at the Republican convention and has been a major Romney supporter.
• Bottom line: Obama's hand has been outstreched, but Republicans have refused to cooperate for fear that doing so would help the economy and Obama.
• Americans are more confident of the economy than at any time since October 2007.
• Stock prices are higher than any time since a year before Obama took office, and have risen 2.5 times faster than under Reagan.
• Obama has added 5.4 million jobs in spite of Tea-Party stone-walling of all significant jobs bills. This is faster than Reagan & Bush added jobs.
• Half a million workers were optimistic enough to start looking for work again in October. They found 410,000 jobs (this counts farm and non-payroll jobs) -- more than twice the number of new payroll jobs. But so many new workers pushed the unemployment rate up by 0.1% to 7.9%. (Down from 10% at the end of Bush's last budget year.)

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• Things were great 4 years ago. (see Disaster)
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• The stimulus didn't work. (see Jobs 2)

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