which was truly a mess, here is his address to Congress in February 2009.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/sotn.obama.transcript/
For example:
But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.
The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and our universities, in our fields and our factories, in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth.
Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.
Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long we have not always met these responsibilities, as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or to look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.
We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy, yet we import more oil today than ever before.
The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform.
Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for.
And though all of these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity, where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.
Sentence in bold is my highlight.
And here is the truth of the state of the economy which Trump inherited.
While you wouldn’t know it from the way the Trump team has been talking about it, the economy is actually in pretty good shape. The current economic expansion just became the third-longest on record. The economy has been adding jobs every month for more than six years, the longest winning streak since World War II. And the federal budget deficit has sharply declined from a high of 9.8 percent of GDP in the middle of the Great Recession to a manageable 3.2 percent last year.
This is not to say that there aren’t problems. Economic growth has been below potential, and many workers are still suffering from disproportionately high unemployment, particularly African-Americans, Hispanics and people with less education.
But all in all, Trump inherited a strengthening economy that just needs a little help and specific interventions to help a wider swath of Americans share more quickly in the continuing economic gains.
So why would he want to make you think it’s a “mess”? The most likely reason, in my view, is that portraying the current state of the economy as rotten helps the administration justify the wholesale change in policies that it is planning. It also lowers the starting bar so that it’s easier to declare victory later.
But the economic policies that he has suggested, including most of his tax cuts he mentioned in his Feb. 28 speech to Congress, would jeopardize the solid economic gains made in the Obama era. To see why, let’s examine just what Obama left on Trump’s doorstep.
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/04/the-truth-about-obamas-economic-legacy-and-trumps-inheritance_partner/
Trump's accusation of "a mess"? Just another lie from the con man.
= new reply since forum marked as read
