To Hillary Clinton, it’s all so obvious: the reason the economy continues to grind along like a sled being pushed uphill on gravel is “bad Republican policies.” These are not merely the reason, but, worse than that, the "original sin.”
Exactly when did she have time to become expert in epistemology, given that she has for the past several years had a very full plate just endeavoring to keep the Clinton Foundation, her numerous dually-employed staff members, and her own endless presidential campaign generously funded while maintaining a façade of engagement with her erstwhile job as secretary of state?
It’s rich (pun intended) to hear the doyenne of donor dispensation (in both directions, from her friends towards her political career and in return to them via “investments” of taxpayer dollars) and codependent-in-chief of crony capitalism assail Republican policies as the source of our pain, when it’s clear that decades of Democratic-led transfer of power and money to government control are at fault — and that’s just what Hillary wants a lot more of.
Assuming you can call what we’ve been experiencing a “recovery” — arguably, the decline in the labor participation rate to its lowest level in nearly 40 years alone belies that descriptive — it should be understood that misguided federal policy caused the 2008 crash whose timing was so propitious for then-candidate Barack Obama.
Bad decisions spanned several administrations, both Democratic and Republican; but it is Hillary’s party that primarily impelled the replacement of rational consideration of a buyer’s ability to afford a mortgage with arbitrary criteria decreed by policymakers who failed to comprehend, or willfully ignored, the common sense of the marketplace.
Perversely, yet predictably, the compulsory misdirection of capital, ostensibly to help the disadvantaged, has hurt most severely those who could least afford it. Underwater mortgages have wrecked family budgets, forced bankruptcies, and dismally anchored the unemployed in locations from which they would otherwise move to find jobs.
The law passed in response to the crash, Dodd-Frank, doubles down on the harm to the struggling middle class, imposing restrictions that particularly burden community banks and make it harder for families and small businesses to obtain mortgages and loans.
Larger entities and the rich have better access to capital, but even then its economic effectiveness is reduced because so much is diverted towards compliance. Thus does regulatory fiat diminish our ability to produce goods and services, to research and develop innovations, and to enjoy the fruits of our collective and individual labors.
The Democrats’ central planning has kept Americans out of work.
The federal government’s “man-caused disasters," to use a term popular among the left, haven’t been limited to the housing and financial-services industries, thanks to the party of Hillary’s relentless push for policies that put the American dream further and further out of reach.
It is the Republicans who have fought for recovery, starting with their unified vote against the 2009 “stimulus,” which they correctly anticipated would amount to nothing more than carte blanche for the Obama administration to waste billions of dollars on their favored constituencies with no accountability and at taxpayer expense.
Question for you, Mrs. Clinton: did the “stimulus” raise the labor participation rate, which is the true measure of how fully our people are employed?
Let me spare you the trouble of breaking out the abacus: it didn’t.
No Republican voted for Obamacare, knowing that it would actually increase the cost of insurance and deprive Americans of the policies and doctors they liked, notwithstanding the president’s glib assurances to the contrary.
After the law passed, small employers across the country were compelled to hold on hiring employees whose benefits they could no longer afford.
Today, five years into the federal takeover of our healthcare, exchange programs across the country are falling to fiscal mismanagement and catastrophic underfunding, leaving patients without access to care and doctors without compensation for their work.
This is the sad consequence of the Democratic misadventure to which Hillary Clinton gave her enthusiastic support, and that she pledges to continue even if its fundamental flaws will doom it to protracted and painful failure and inflict the consequences on long-suffering Americans who lack alternatives.
For these many derelictions of public policy that have increased the gap between rich and poor, and deprived all of us of the opportunity to prosper and to help others to do so, we can assign original blame to the arrogance, ignorance, and caprice of the left.
Its smug, opportunistic, and self-enriching standard-bearer may accuse the opposing party of “sin,” but she would be well to remove the log from her own eye first.
Nan Hayworth is a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The first and only female physician to serve as a voting member of Congress, she was named one of the five “highest-profile freshmen” by Politico. She is a regular commentator on CNBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Newsmax TV. For more of her reports, Go Here Now.
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