BET [5]'s Keith Boykin runs down the anti-Obama rhetoric that he can already predict will come out of the RNC.
1. Higher Taxes Will Hurt "Job Creators"
Despite what Republicans have been arguing lately, taxes are actually lower today than at any time in decades. Here's the history they don't want you to know.
For six of the eight years of the Reagan administration, the top marginal income tax rate was 50 percent. Under Republican President Richard Nixon the top tax rate stood at 70 percent. And under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower the top tax rate was 91 percent.
2. The Stimulus Didn't Work
Republicans love to complain about the American Recovery Act of 2009. They routinely deride it as President Obama's "failed stimulus." Members of the mainstream media rarely challenge this claim, in part because deficit-wary Democrats seldom push back on this argument with facts and figures, as they should.
The truth is the stimulus created nearly three million jobs. And in a recent survey, 92 percent of economists agreed that the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate, which dropped from 10 percent in 2009 to nearly 8 percent under Obama.
When Obama came into office, the economy was losing 700,000 jobs a month. Once the stimulus was passed, the job losses slowed and eventually turned around. Within a few months of the Recovery Act, the recession ended. And a few months later, jobs started coming back again.
Read Keith Boykin's entire piece at BET.com. [5]
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