October 2017 Obama's Numbers FROM PAGE 10


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president-elect would, once in office, cut taxes and regulation as promised. But the S&P rise between Election Day and Obama’s last day in office was just under 6 percent — a small fraction of the entire gain during Obama’s tenure. Stock prices already had set record after record before Trump’s election, as we have written before.


Debt and Deficits The


federal debt more than


doubled under Obama, and he left Trump a legacy of worsening deficits.


Debt — On the day Obama left


office, the U.S. government’s debt owed to the public was more than $14.4 trillion, an increase of more than 128 percent during his eight years.


The debt also has grown


dramatically even when measured as a percentage of the growing economy, from 52.3 percent of gross domestic product at the end of fiscal year 2009 to 77.0 percent as of the end of fiscal year 2016 on Sept. 30, 2016, according to historical budget figures from the Office of Management and Budget.


Deficits — Under Obama, annual


federal deficits fell, but then turned up again.


fiscal year 2009. As we’ve documented elsewhere, Obama inherited


The deficit hit $1.4 trillion in most


of that deficit and signed spending measures that contributed as much as $203 billion to FY 2009’s red ink.


After that, the yearly deficits


declined markedly for several years. In fiscal year 2015, the deficit was $438 billion, a drop of 69 percent from FY 2009.


But deficits were again on the rise


as Obama left office. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in June 2017 that the deficit for FY 2017 — which ends Sept. 30 and is the last one for which Obama signed spending bills — will increase to $693 billion.


CBO also projects that under


financial crisis and ensuing economic downturn.


Then they recovered


quickly under Obama — far more quickly than jobs or personal incomes — and reached a new record in 2010, his second year in office.


From there they climbed even


higher, setting more new annual records in 2012, 2013 and 2014, when they reached $1.74 trillion.


Profits slipped a bit in 2015, but


in Obama’s final year profits were still $1.69 trillion — not far below the 2014 record and 57.3 percent higher than in 2008, the year before he took office.


That gain was higher than during


all but three other post-war admin- istrations, behind the 122.7 percent gain under George W. Bush, the 124.5 percent gain during the Nixon-Ford years and the 87.5 percent gain during the Kennedy-Johnson years. It was only slightly higher than the 57.0 percent gain during Truman’s final, four-year term.


Technical note: There are several


ways to measure corporate profits. We present here the same historical measure followed by Federal Reserve Bank


economists, changes which or gauges


profits of U.S. corporations from all their global operations, after taxes and without adjustments for inflation, inventory


changes in


capital (such as depreciation.) Annual figures go back to 1929, and can be found on line 45 of BEA’s “National Income by Types of Income” table (Table 1.12).


Stock Prices Owners of corporate stocks also did


quite well under Obama. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average more than doubled — rising by 166 percent during his eight years in office.


Among post-war administrations,


that’s second only to the 209 percent rise in the S&P index during Clinton’s two terms, and it handily outpaced the 114 percent gain under Reagan.


To some extent, the gain under Obama represents a rebound from an unusually depressed level. The financial crisis of 2007-2009 caused stock prices to plunge. By George W. Bush’s last day in office, the S&P 500 stood 37 percent below where it had been on the last trading day before he first took office in 2001.


Other stock market indexes


tell similar stories. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 138 percent under Obama after falling 22 percent under his predecessor, for example.


Some of the gain took place in the weeks just after Trump was elected, a “Trump Rally” that many attribute at least partly to investor optimism that the


current law, annual deficits will again exceed $1 trillion in 2022 and beyond. As things stand, federal debt owed to the public will reach 80 percent of GDP in 2020, and more than 91 percent in 2027, CBO projects.


Health Insurance Americans The


Coverage — Millions of gained


health insurance


coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.


percentage of all the U.S.


residents who lack coverage dropped sharply, from 14.7 percent the year before Obama entered


White


House to 9.0 percent in his final year — the lowest on record. Nevertheless, those gains fell far short of Obama’s 2007 campaign promise to “cover every American.”


Our data come from the National


Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has tracked health insurance coverage on a reasonably consistent basis since 1997.


According to NHIS figures, 43.8


million Americans of all ages lacked health insurance in 2008, but in 2016 that number was down to 28.6 million — a drop of 15.2 million people.


The number of uninsured actually


rose during the first two years of Obama’s time, reaching 48.6 million in 2010. That’s because of the Great Recession


of 2007-2009, when


millions of workers lost their jobs, and any health insurance benefits that went


with them. The number of uninsured drifted


down after that, as the economy


slowly recovered. But then it dropped sharply beginning in 2014, the first year that the ACA’s main provisions took effect. Those provisions required that individuals obtain coverage or pay a tax penalty, made government- paid Medicaid available more widely to millions of additional low-income people, and provided government subsidies to help those further up the income scale pay for private insurance.


Premiums — Obama also failed


to deliver on his campaign promise to “lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.” For the typical worker, premiums continued to rise faster than wages or inflation, though more slowly than before.


Premiums for employer-spon-


sored health insurance (which covers nearly 56 percent of the population, according to Census figures) rose 43 percent under Obama for family policies, and 37 percent for policies covering a single person.


information comes from annual surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Education Trust, which is the nonprofit research arm of the American Hospital Association.


That To be sure, premiums rose twice


as fast before Obama took office. Family rates rose 97 percent and sin- gle-coverage


during George W. Bush’s eight years in office.


continued


But the rise under Obama to


outpace the average


weekly earnings of all employees (up 20 percent under Obama) and the rise in consumer prices (up 15 percent).


The effect on take-home pay for workers was made even larger because employers picked up a somewhat smaller share of the total cost of health coverage on average.


Under Obama, the worker portion


of annual health insurance premiums rose by $1,923 for a family policy, and $408 for single coverage. Both those figures represented a 57 percent increase during his eight years in office.


Obama promised to lower


premiums when he first ran for the White House. “We’re going to work with your employers to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family, per year,” he said. At another point, he said, “We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.” Aides said when Obama spoke of “lowering” or “reducing” premiums he really meant that he would reduce the rate of growth, though he did not make that clear when speaking to voters.


Immigration


The flow of people caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally


slowed markedly under


Obama. In his final year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended just under 443,000, down 35 percent from the year before he took office.


how many illegal undetected,


Though it’s impossible to know crossings went


the number of those


apprehended is the best available indicator of the overall trend.


The percentage decline under


Obama was far less than the 58 percent decline under George W. Bush, who nearly doubled the number of agents stationed at the Southwest border.


rates rose 90 percent


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