How Democrats Pulled the U.S. Economy Back from the Brink

When President Barack Obama took the oath of office about a year ago, he inherited the biggest economic mess since the 1930's: millions of Americans losing their homes to foreclosure and their jobs to a steadily deteriorating economy, huge budget deficits fueled by tax cuts for the wealthy and two wars his predecessor simply put on the national credit card, mushrooming national debt and some of the biggest barons on Wall Street in financial collapse. A year later, we take stock. The President's State of the Union speech provided a good overview. A new document just released by the U.S. Senate's Democratic Policy Committee, which I chair, takes a similar look at the challenges we faced in 2009 and the work the President and Democrats in Congress accomplished to keep the economy from completely collapsing. The Bush recession was wide and deep, as difficult as we've seen since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. It took much of the past year to enact the economic rescue program and put it in place. We are now beginning to see some significant results. I invite you to read the document in its entirety. Nobody claims the economy is totally back on its feet, but it is hard to deny, even as difficulties continue, that policies enacted over the past year pulled the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster and helped to stabilize it. There is lots more detail in the

, but here is a sampling of some of the legislation Congress enacted over the past year that have worked, and that we must now build on to hasten and strengthen economic recovery.

It's been a tough year, but the investments we made in the economy pulled it back from the brink of disaster. We're not out of the woods yet by a long shot, but there are signs the Bush Recession may now be ending. The final quarter of 2009 showed real economic growth, at the fastest pace in six years. Many economists are forecasting even more growth in the first quarter of 2010. President Obama likes to say that the federal government and our economy are like an ocean liner, not a motor boat. It takes quite a while to turn them around. The DPC policy paper documents how we've been doing turning it around and the progress we're making. Our next challenge: build on those fundamental improvements to create more jobs and sustained economic growth in 2010.