During a Tuesday interview with CNN, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accidentally acknowledged that the economy under former President Barack Obama, a member of his own party, was quite poor.
In the course of explaining why he would not work across party lines on coronavirus economic relief, Schumer said that bipartisanship was to blame for the economy staying “in recession for five years” during the Obama presidency.
Specifically, Schumer said that Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which cost 831 billion dollars, would have been much larger and more effective had Democrats not tried to work with Republican Senator Susan Collins in 2009.
As recently as February 17th of 2020, Obama claimed that the economy had entered a period of economic growth within a year of his recovery act being signed. By definition, a period of economic growth is not a “recession,” and Schumer’s claim that the recession went on for five years after the act was passed directly contradicts Obama’s belief that a recovery was well underway from the early days of his presidency.
