The paltry first-quarter economic growth announced last week of 0.2 percent adds more evidence of the desultory state of the economy under President Obama, says Stephen Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

"Are the alarm bells finally clanging at the White House and in Congress? They should be," he writes in The Washington Times.

The recovery from the 2007-09 recession is the slowest in 50 years, Moore says. Gross domestic product, a measure of a country’s total economic output, was $17.7 trillion in the first three months of this year.

"This is a national crisis, not any less significant than the burning of Baltimore last week,” Moore says. “We are $1.6 trillion lower on current GDP than we should be."

But all is not lost, Moore maintains. "Fortunately, there are natural tailwinds that should accelerate growth over the next year or so."

That includes low energy prices and the strong dollar, which is attracting "record amounts of new investment and construction" to our shores, he says.

Oil prices have dropped 45 percent since last June, and the dollar hit multi-year highs against a range of currencies in recent months.

"But there's no getting back that nearly $2 trillion of GDP that is now permanently missing," Moore writes. "We can now officially declare Obamanomics a grand failed experiment. Let's hope the history books get it right so we are never, ever foolish enough to try this again."

John Tamny, political economy editor at Forbes, offers a different perspective of the latest GDP data.

"Lost on the left and right who live and die based on the fraud that is GDP is the more realistic truth that the number was created by economists (this is historical fact) to justify more government involvement in the economy, including more spending," he writes.

"That’s why the number often reads as poor even when the economy-sapping burden that is government is in relative retreat."

So what's the significance of last Wednesday's report for the first quarter?

It "revealed bullish government retreat from the economy, and that’s great for growth. Too bad no one noticed," Tamny states. Lower government spending means lower GDP.

"GDP is upside down, as will be the commentary of politicians, economists and pundits so long as they pay mind to such a worthless number," he says.

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