Sudhanshu Handa: Economic pretense

Garland S. Tucker is “Grappling with choice” (Sept. 15 Point of View) about which presidential candidate to pick, and he decided on Donald Trump. He is “afraid that Clinton will provide four more years of Obama retrenchment and decline” and said, “We cannot afford four more years of economic stagnation.”

I wonder which planet Tucker was living on when this planet went through the largest recession ever recorded in 2008, caused by the savings and loan crisis hatched under a Republican president and Republican Congress. By the time George W. Bush left office, our economy was hemorrhaging jobs at a rate of 700,000 per month. It took President Obama almost two years to right the ship. By 2015 our economy was adding an average of 230,000 new jobs per month, and today the stock market has never been higher.

Tucker can vote for Trump, but let’s not pretend it’s because the U.S. economy is in decline.

This story was originally published September 21, 2016 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Sudhanshu Handa: Economic pretense."