Obama Administration to Revise Total GDP Growth Down 2%

The Commerce Department is set this July to publish a stunning 2 percent downward revision of gross domestic product (GDP) during the Obama Administration term in office.

The Department’s Bureau of Economic Statistics (BEA) regularly makes small revisions to its published statistics as more information becomes available over time. But in a massively large adjustment, the BEA just revised downward — by $346 billion — the real (after-inflation) GDP for 50 states and the District of Columbia, covering the 11-year period from 2005 through the end of 2015.

According to BEA’s newest data, real GDP was overstated by about $125 billion from 2007 through 2008, during the period leading into the start of the Great Recession. But the overstatement shrank to about $70 billion in 2009.

During 2012 and 2013, when the U.S. economy had what some have referred to as a micro-recession, the overstatement of real GDP growth ballooned to about $275 billion. Despite over $100 billion in revisions to real GDP growth in 2014 and 2015, the overstatement continued to grow to $324 billion, or 2 percent of GDP.

The Obama Administration is already under fire for producing an average real GDP growth of just 1.55 percent for their its 7 years in office. That ranks the Obama presidency as the fourth from the bottom for the 43 Presidents of the United States, Obama’s performance ranks above only Herbert Hoover at -5.65 percent, Andrew Johnson at -0.70 percent and Theodore Roosevelt at 1.41 percent.

From 1790 to 2000, U.S. real GDP growth averaged 3.79 percent. The much-criticized administration of President George W. Bush delivered average real GDP growth of 2.10 percent, with 2004 and 2005 coming in at over 3 percent growth.

The longest previous period in U.S. economic history of continuous sub-3 percent growth was the four-year period from 1930-1933 during the Great Depression. Without at least a 3.0 percent economic growth rate, America cannot pay its bills and runs deficits.

The American voters disapprove of Barack Obama’s handling of the economy by 53 percent to 46 percent, according to Gallup. But the president has rebounded from his all-time-low of 33 percent in November 2014 and his most recent rating for handling of the economy is his best score since September 2009. That explains why polls give the President an overall job approval of 51 percent (to 46 percent that disapprove).

But now the government is set to erase a huge percent of the Obama administration’s national GDP growth during the last week of July 2016. That is just in time for President Obama’s big speech at the Democratic National Convention, which runs from July 26 to July 28.