Letter: Quit pining for non-existent past

A reader has confused facts with ideology on President Obama.

The oft-forgotten fact is that President George W. Bush signed TARP in October 2008 for $700 billion. Obama’s stimulus in 2009 was $700 billion and it was approved by Congress.

ARP funds and the GM bailout were all paid back with interest. The U.S. economy had a recession, not a depression, because of those two “bailouts.” The Fed’s quantitative easing was not created by Obama. Worry about GDP is real, but the global economy has changed (see Japan) and European countries that embraced “austerity” now have GDPs below zero and unemployment over 10 percent. By the way, that’s what Republicans wanted. What’s good for your personal finances doesn’t apply to countries.

Obamacare has provided health care for 20 million Americans while still allowing private employment to grow by 16 million jobs since its nadir in 2009 (Bush peaked at 7 million;Reagan 17 million). So much for “job killing Obamacare.” All this while government employment decreased by 750,000. Ask any hospital administrator how he likes having fewer “charity” cases to account for on his financial statement. As for the tax on the top 2 percent, they can afford it.

The real cause of ISIL, etc., was Bush and his war of choice in Iraq.

The world has changed and no amount of fact changing will reverse that. Progress going forward means working together to improve the lives of all Americans, not living in and pining for a past that isn’t coming back.

This story was originally published May 9, 2016 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Letter: Quit pining for non-existent past."