Nolte: Fact Checking Barbra Streisand’s Presidential Economic Report Card

According to Barbra Streisand, over the last 40 years, America has enjoyed only economic good times under Democrat presidents and economic recessions under Republican presidents.

Here’s her audaciously dishonest report card:

This is easy to fact-check, something the 82-year-old liar is hoping none of her 812,000 Xwitter followers do. She’s hoping their attitude is, Well, Babs did sing about people who need people, so she must know here stuff. The thing is, she probably does know her stuff and chose to lie anyway.

As you can see here, the truth is this….

In January of 1981, Ronald Reagan (1981-1988) inherited a disastrous economy from Jimmy Carter and rescued the economy with year after year of robust economic growth. Thanks to Reagan’s tax and regulation cuts, the economy took off in 1983 and sailed along with only a couple of rough patches for the next 25 years.

While it’s true there was a recession under Republican George H.W. Bush (1989-1992), it was a shallow and quick one. Nevertheless, even though the economy was back on its feet by 1992, it cost Bush his reelection. This meant Democrat Bill Clinton (1993-2000) inherited a growing economy. Clinton did a great job managing this inherited economy. He was smart enough to get out of the way of what was still the Reagan Revolution. However, when Clinton left office in 2000, we found ourselves in another shallow recession.

In the cases of Bush Sr. and Clinton, one can reasonably say that both of those recessions were shallow and cyclical. After some ten years of nonstop economic growth, a correction of that kind is inevitable.

File/Former President Bill Clinton poses with Barbra Streisand at the dedication of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center in the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, on Thursday June 14, 2012. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

In January of 2001, Republican George W. Bush (2001-2016) became president and the economy was pretty great straight through to the 2008 economic crash. But who do you blame that crash on? Bush was president, so he deserves some of the blame, but the Great Recession was a housing crash caused by the federal government’s interference in the real estate market. Two government-backed mortgage services — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — doled out mortgages and second mortgages to people who were not close to qualified.

It was lunacy, and once the music came to a stop, a whole lot of homeowners discovered they were without a chair and could no longer pay their mortgages. The housing market collapsed, and so did the economy. This brings us to Democrat Barry Obama (2009-2016)…

After inheriting a wrenching recession in 2009, all Barry had to do was get out of the way and wait for the inevitable—a massive economic rebound. Instead, Barry raised taxes, increased regulations, and shoved the Obamacare boondoggle down our throats. Instead of a robust return to normal, America slogged through the Obama Years with listless growth. By the time Barry left office in 2017, while the economy was growing, we’d gone through a tough year of listless growth that averaged out to just 1.8 percent.

File/President Barack Obama presents Barbra Streisand with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the 2015 Presidential Medal Of Freedom ceremony at the White House on November 24, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Kris Connor/WireImage)

Until the once-in-a-century pandemic hit in 2020, Republican Donald Trump’s (2017-2020) economic record was outstanding. His pro-growth policies returned America to real and sustained growth, unemployment hit record lows, and mortgage rates dropped to around three percent. These were boom times for everyone. Amazingly, the pandemic and its anti-science lockdowns only sidetracked the economy for two quarters. When Trump left office, the economy had already recovered, which immediately dissolves Streisand’s absurd claim that Joe Biden rescued the economy or is responsible for the “fastest economic growth” in history.

The pandemic economy rebounded just months after Trump left office, long before Biden’s economic policies killed that growth with the massive spending and crippling of domestic energy production that created all this devastating inflation, 25 percent credit card rates, and seven percent interest rates.

John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover on Kindle and Audiobook.