Barney Frank: The President Has Really Turned Around the 'Mess of The Economy

During an interview with CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) discussed everything from the Trayvon Martin shooting, to gay marriage, to his upcoming retirement. And while none of these are surprising for this congressman to talk about, the eye-opening moment occurred when he said (with a straight face) that president Obama has helped “turn around the mess of the economy.”

Really?

“When you look at the election, you look at the campaign season here,” Malveaux said, “What do you think President Obama has done right, that he’s gotten right? And what do you think he really needs to work on?”

“What he’s clearly done right is to help turn around the mess of the economy,” Rep. Frank responded. “He inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. Interestingly, because he was trying to be somewhat bipartisan, he did himself a lot of political damage by not stressing how bad things were.”

Actually, Rep. Frank, do you know why the President failed to stress “how bad things were”? It’s not because he was trying to be “bipartisan.” It’s because he -- and the president has admitted this on more than one occasion! -- didn’t know “how bad things were.”

“And I think that’s part of the reason people said ‘Oh, well, gee! He didn’t move quick enough,’” Rep. Frank continued, “In fact, the American economy today, of all the economies of the advanced nations in the world (Japan, Europe), we’re doing the best. And we’re doing the best because we’re mixing policies.”

Watch Rep. Frank discuss the president’s economic successes at the 5:37 mark (via CNN):

“Now we’ve been retarded,” Rep. Frank said, “by conservative opposition. We have created in the United States, since the beginning of the turnaround in late 2009, maybe about four million private sector jobs.”

“I think [President Obama] has dealt with the economy well,” the Massachusetts congressman concluded.

It’s all well and good if Rep. Frank wants to believe this, but an overwhelming amount of recent data might disagree with him. Perhaps Rep. Frank would like to tell the 8.1 percent of unemployed Americans (11.1 percent real unemployed) that the president has really helped turn this economy around.