Weak First-Quarter GDP Shows Failure Of Obmanomics

Economy: The first estimate for early 2012 is in, and it's not pretty. GDP grew just 2.2% - way below expectations. The "Obama recovery" the media keep touting is looking more and more like a fraud.

Since entering office, President Obama has presided over the worst recovery since the Great Depression. While the recovery began just four months after Obama took office, since then GDP growth has averaged just 2.4% at a yearly rate. Pathetic.

At a less-than-3% growth rate, the economy won't even create enough jobs to sop up the 130,000 or so people who enter the workforce each month, much less the 14 million or so who are officially unemployed.

Since the recession ended in June of 2009, the average number of jobs created each month has been 70,000. That's why the jobless rate has stayed above 8% since the early months of Obama's time in the White House.

And that's also why we have 1.6 million fewer jobs today than when Obama first stepped into office. Obama's policies have created a massive growth deficit.

In recent weeks, jobless claims have started to edge up again toward recessionary levels, with the four-week moving average last week rising 6,000 to 389,000.

Even so, the media have sold Americans on the idea that we're in a recovery, thanks to Obama's economic policies - which include $862 billion of "stimulus," soaring debt and annual deficits of $1 trillion-plus, green energy subsidies to bankrupt firms, a looming half-trillion-dollar tax hike, and a regulatory onslaught.

As such, the first quarter of this year was supposed to be a follow-up to last year's final three months, when the economy grew at a 3% pace.

After all, consumers were starting to spend. The automakers were rebounding from their slump, we were told. And record warm weather across the country meant there'd be a lot more construction and other weather-related economic activity.

Instead, we got another "disappointment."

Month in and month out, the disappointments are adding up, as shown by the government's own estimates for "potential GDP" - that is, what U.S. economic output would be if the economy fired on all cylinders.

In the first quarter, real GDP hit a $13.5 trillion annual rate. But potential GDP was far bigger: $14.27 trillion.

That gives us a neat accounting of exactly what Obama's policies have cost: $768 billion in lost output.

That's reflected in lost jobs, lost growth, lost income, lost opportunity. This is the legacy of Obamanomics.

Americans have a chance to end this economic tragedy, but they'll have to enter the voting booth to do so.

It's the starkest choice in generations. Let's hope we have the wisdom to make the right one. Four more years of this will bankrupt us.