Achi news desk-
By Jeff Mason
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton dug into an issue that has worried economists, political strategists and the White House on Thursday – if the US fiscal numbers are so good, why are Americans so unhappy with the economy?
Speaking at a high-dollar fundraiser for President Joe Biden at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Obama and Clinton urged thousands there to stick with the Democratic president for a second term, while trying to pinpoint the reasons why economic worries are high despite despite job growth, healthy spending and a better-than-expected rise in GDP.
There are “structural problems” that hold people back, Obama said, including preventing unions. That’s something Biden has specifically fought against, he said.
“If you’re working hard, and your paycheck is getting more challenging, beyond the breaking point, and you’re worried about rent, and you’re worried about price gas, it’s understandable,” Obama said.
The thing that Biden and the people who support him need to communicate is: “Who do you think is really going to look out for you?” Obama said. He made it clear that he did not believe that former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, would meet that test.
Trump and Republicans have blamed Biden for high prices that hurt American pocketbooks in grocery stores, the housing market and other sectors of the economy. Biden has pointed to company profiteering, lack of competition and has argued that inflation is falling but there is still more work to be done.
Clinton, who was president from 1993 to 2001, appeared to compare the current situation to the run-up to the 2016 election in which his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump.
The 2008 financial crisis ruined and limited what Obama could accomplish, Clinton said. Biden, then Obama’s vice president, did “a lot of good work” running the Recovery Act of 2009 then, Clinton said, as they worked to fill a $3 trillion hole in the economy. But at the end of Obama’s term, people could not feel the economic progress completely yet. They did later.
“President Trump, let’s be honest, had a pretty good couple of years because he stole them from Barack Obama,” Clinton said of the economy Trump inherited from his predecessor.
“I listened to him tell us how terrible the entire American economy was during 2016 and then by January 2017, after the inauguration, it had become wonderful, miraculous, overnight.”
The country should not make the mistake of 2016 again, Clinton said.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Heather Timmons; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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