Obama Drives a Stake Through Republican Hearts By Dropping A Fact Bomb About His Economic Success

President Obama drove a stake through Republican narratives about him at the G-7 Summit on Monday, pointing out that since he took office, the United States cut our deficit by two-thirds. A fact you would not know if you only listened to Republicans or the media.

“Since I took office, the United States has cut our deficit by two-thirds,” President Obama said at the G-7 Summit, wounding Republican deficit hawks to the core. Though to be fair, Republicans only started caring about the deficit once they were no longer at the helm and thus unable to continue recklessly driving it up by charging everything.

Here’s a handy chart to demonstrate just how much the deficit has reduced under President Obama, from the White House:

Republicans must not have enjoyed the President’s presser on Monday in which he correctly took ownership of a multitude of positive economic news on issues that Republicans pretend to be experts on from private sector jobs to the deficit.

“We agree that the best way to sustain the global economic recovery is by focusing on job and growth. That is what I am focused on in the United States,” President Obama said.

“On Friday we learned that our economy created another 200,080 jobs in May, the strongest month of the year so far, and over 3 million over the past year, the nearly fastest pace in over a decade.” Obama continued, “We’ve now seen 5 straight years of private sector job growth. 12.6 million new jobs created, the longest streak on record.”

Ouch. The President was referring to the incredible news on Friday that he set a new record for private sector job growth, with the private sector adding 12.6 million jobs over 63 straight months of job growth. Even the normally unimpressed were called it a “robust” report.

“The unemployment rate is near its lowest level in seven years. Wages for American workers continue to rise and since I took office, the United States has cut its deficit by two-thirds,” President Obama said.

“So, in the global economy, America is a major source of strength, at the same time we realize that while growing the global economy while growing is still not performing at its potential and we agreed on a number of steps,” the President continued setting the stage for the agreed upon agenda of the Summit.

At the G-7 Summit, the leaders are addressing diverse issues from sustainable development to promoting peace to trade to advancing women’s economic empowerment. According to the White House fact sheet on the Summit, “The President met with the other Leaders of the G-7 at Schloss Elmau, Germany on June 7-8 to make tangible progress on a wide range of economic, security, and development priorities. The G-7 stands resolved in its commitment to uphold the values of freedom and democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights, and the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

It hasn’t been a good few days for Republicans, with conservative David Brooks noting that Obama has run a scandal-free administration, saying that there are people in Washington who set a standard of integrity and attract people of integrity. Shhh, don’t tell the Republicans in the House who are spending your tax money on endless investigations into non-existent scandals.

The beauty of President Obama’s last two years is he can say it like it is. He is no longer responsible for Democrats in races around the country, and his only partisan job is to take ownership of the achievements under his administration so that the Democrats running in 2016 can ride the wave.

These economic achievements were accomplished while Republicans were derailing them at every turn, including shutting down the government to the tune of billions of dollars, shutting down national security — oh, it’s hard to think of something they haven’t shut down. Republicans might have been able to claim ownership of the deficit reduction, except that not only are they continuing to advocate for policies that caused a large part of the deficit, but their antics and inability to govern and fake investigations have cost the government billions and billions of dollars. So they have added to the deficit in their attempt to bring Obama down. It’s too bad Republicans can’t get on the country first bus, even once, and be a part of the solution.