Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Monday said the country was “clearly” better off than four years ago, walking back remarks he made this weekend.
“We are clearly better off as a country, because we are now creating jobs rather than losing jobs,” said O’Malley on CNN’s “Starting Point.” “We have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession,” he added.
O’Malley’s comments came after Republicans seized on a remark he made on Sunday saying that voters were not better off.
O’Malley was asked by CBS host Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” if he could “honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago.”
“No,” replied O’Malley, a prominent Obama surrogate, “but that’s not the question of this election.
“Without a doubt, we are not as well-off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses," O'Malley had added.
At The New Republic, Timothy Noah writes that most people are worse off:
Median household income losses between June 2009 and June 2012 occurred for nearly every conceivable demographic group. Family households lost 4.7 percent. Nonfamily households (i.e., people who live alone) lost 7.5 percent. Men who live alone did very badly; they lost 9.4 percent. Households headed by African-Americans did even worse; they lost 11.1 percent. Married-couple households weathered the, um, recovery better than others, but still lost 3.6 percent. Weirdly, two-earner households lost more income (5.9 percent) than one-earner households (4 percent), perhaps because they started out with more income to lose. Households headed by full-time workers lost 5.1 percent. Households headed by private-sector workers lost 4.5 percent, while households headed by government workers lost 3.5 percent.
