What are the facts on jobs and debt?

It's easier today to get to the facts regarding the claims of Tea Party candidates, like Newt Gingrich, who consistently claim President Obama and Democrats killed jobs in manufacturing and that Democrats are the ones to blame for trillions in national debt. You can read and compare the numbers without any additional comments on my part. You can also follow the links in the citations if you need more background information and interpretation.

Barack Obama: Increase of 157,368 manufacturing jobs per year in office
George W. Bush: Decrease of 434,143 manufacturing jobs per year in office
Bill Clinton: Increase of 37,143 manufacturing jobs per year in office
George H.W. Bush: Decrease of 336,000 manufacturing jobs per year in office
Ronald Reagan: Increase of 1,429 manufacturing jobs per year in office
Jimmy Carter: Increase of 15,333 manufacturing jobs per year in office

FROM: John Aravosis, "Guess which presidents killed manufacturing jobs in the last 20 years? Their names are Bush," AMERICAblog, Dec. 6, 2011. Available online: http://www.americablog.com/2011/12/guess-which-presidents-killed.html

"Newt Gingrich says Barack Obama has killed jobs in energy, manufacturing," Politifacts.com, Dec. 5, 2011. Available online: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/06/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-says-barack-obama-has-killed-jobs-en/

As to which presidential administrations created most of the national debt:

GOP Presidents    Democratic Presidents
$9.5 trillion               $3.8 trillion

Total debt is $14.3 trillion.
$1 trillion of debt comes from before Reagan
(NYT doesn't make clear who created that debt).
$13.3 trillion accumulated from Reagan to Obama.

71% of the $13.3 trillion was under GOP presidents.
28% of the $13.3 trillion was under Dem presidents.

(Source: NYT pieced together data from Treasury, OMB, Federal Reserve Bank of NY, and more)

PS And before anyone says "you have to look at who controlled Congress," I don't recall the Republicans worrying about that fact when they blamed Obama for the deficit and the national debt.

What's more, I also don't recall any Republican presidents vetoing the debt ceiling increase during their tenure. In fact, many of the biggest causes of the national debt were GOP presidential initiatives, such as:

* Reagan defense budgets and tax cuts
* George HW Bush gulf war
* George W Bush tax cuts, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As for Democratic Presidents, you have Bill Clinton who actually put us in a surplus - which George Bush immediately blew on a... wait for it... tax cut - and Barack Obama who inherited the biggest economic downturn since the Great
Depression (thus you can't blame him for that, just as I don't include the three Bush recessions or the Reagan recession in the early 80s).

FROM: John Aravosis,  "71% of national debt happened during GOP presidencies; 28% under Dem presidents," AMERICAblog, July 28, 2011. Available online: http://www.americablog.com/2011/07/71-of-national-debt-happened-during-gop.html

The problem with the national debt is that the last three Republican administrations financed three major wars and huge tax cuts for their wealthy friends on our national credit card while helping multinational corporations export American jobs instead of American made products.

Thanks for two blog posts from John Aravosis, Editor of AMERICAblog, and a fact-checking by Politifact.com, a site dedicated to checking the accuracy of politicians and pundits sponsored by the Tampa Bay Times. I don't always agree with all of the political positions of all the authors and blogs that I read, but these two short factual items may help cut through the "heifer dust" being added to the political compost pile and get a lot closer to the hard facts.

"Republicans love the 'truth' but they hate 'facts.'" - Bill Maher

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