You and I have that in common, Congressman Waxman.

“But look, the president inherited a terrible economy. We were hemorrhaging jobs in 2008 when he got elected so that by the time he took office in 2009 we had over 10 percent unemployment. We had the banks frozen, they couldn’t deal with their assets. The economy has not recovered — some people call it a recession, I think it’s a depression. And the president has tried to get the economy moving, but from the first day he took office, the Republicans have given him no slack. They’ve opposed everything he’s done. They act as if he’s created the deficits, but under George W. Bush, we fought two wars without paying for them; we gave tax breaks, primarily for the upper income, we never paid for it; we gave an increased benefit under Medicare, prescription drugs, that’s very nice, we could’ve done it in a more cost-effective way, but we didn’t pay for that either. So, we have these deficits. President Bush inherited a balanced budget, and by the time he left, we had over 10 percent unemployment and a huge deficit, and now the Republicans are trying to blame it on President Obama. They say he hasn’t done enough, but they don’t help him get anything done — they stop him from any of his efforts.”

But acknowledging the depths to which this not-technically-a-recession/depression is plaguing America’s productivity is where Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) and my similarities end, because I’ve just about had it with liberals blaming the ‘inherited’ economy on Bush, acting like President Obama is completely innocent and didn’t do anything to add to the deficits, and lamenting that our republic is functioning exactly the way it was intended to function.

Yes, the upswing on the deficits started under George W. Bush — most especially the last two years of his presidency, when the Democrats were in full control of Congress. And yes, the bad economic news began before Obama’s time — but President Obama has managed to get plenty of legislation through (i.e., bailouts, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, etcetera) and implemented plenty of policy through the executive branch. We are now three and half years into his presidency, but the economy doesn’t seem to do much except fluctuate between marginal gains and losses. How long are we expected to wait for results?

And lastly, for the first two years of his presidency, Obama had a fully Democratic Congress at his disposal. Americans decided they didn’t like that state of play, and elected Republicans into the House in droves in 2010 for precisely the purpose of frustrating President Obama’s awful plans. That’s the way the system works — kindly get over it, and please stop acting like the lack of bipartisanship in Congress right now is some sort of travesty of justice.