On The Money: Trump seeks to distance strong economy from Obama policies | Mulvaney calls out GOP for deficits under Trump | Kickstarter union seen as breakthrough for tech activists

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THE BIG DEAL–Trump seeks to distance strong economy from Obama policies in White House report: President Trump is seeking to downplay former President Obama’s impact on a steady stretch of economic growth and job gains in a White House report released Thursday, claiming credit for the continued strength of the economy.

Trump and top White House economists sought to dispel claims that the president did little to improve on the growing economy he inherited from Obama.

• The U.S. has added jobs in each month since July 2009 while maintaining positive economic growth, shattering a record for the longest stretch of prosperity in U.S. history.

• While economists credit a wide range of economic and fiscal policies for the expansion, Trump and his top aides argue in the 2020 Economic Report of the President that their agenda is responsible for avoiding a widely expected slowdown during his term.

The argument: “The current economy is not a continuation of expansion after the Great Recession,” Tomas Philipson, acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in a conference call with reporters.

“Those who say this is currently a continuation of the past expansion are contradicting what they themselves said in 2016,” he added.

The context: 

• Trump frequently boasts that under his watch the U.S. has defied a prediction among most economists in 2016 that U.S. growth and job gains would slow from the pace enjoyed under Obama. 

• Trump’s critics claim the president is benefiting from the impact of Obama’s economic policies and the Federal Reserve’s maintenance of low interest rates throughout both of their terms in office. 

• Economists across the ideological spectrum also say that while the economy has far exceeded expectations during Trump’s term, it is too soon to gauge the impact of his tax cuts and deregulation on the long-term prospects for U.S. growth.

LEADING THE DAY

Mulvaney calls out GOP for being ‘a lot less interested’ in deficits under Trump: Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney called out Republicans for being “a lot less interested” in deficits under President Trump than when former President Obama was in office, The Washington Post reported. 

Mulvaney spoke at the Oxford Union and said that the GOP is “very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House,” according to audio from the speech obtained by the Post. 

• “The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president,” he said. “Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party.”

• The acting chief of staff then added he found the $1 trillion deficit in the Trump era “extraordinarily disturbing.” But he added that neither political party cared about the deficit anymore, and the GOP is “evolving” since the president’s election.

At a different speech, Mulvaney said that the U.S. needs more immigrants to keep the economy growing, breaking from the administration’s strict restrictions on immigration.

“We are desperate — desperate — for more people,” Mulvaney said at the gathering in England. “We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.”

• Several studies have warned that the U.S. economy will require more immigrant labor to keep expanding, as many American workers drop out of the labor market due to age, automation and other factors.

• A paper released in August by the Migration Policy Institute said that increased immigration would likely be an overall benefit to the economy in a changing labor market, but “it can negatively affect some low-skilled workers, who have already been hard hit by technological change, globalization, and weakening labor unions.”

Kickstarter union seen as breakthrough for tech activism: The decision by employees at crowdfunding company Kickstarter to unionize is a historic first in the tech industry, highlighting the growing trend of worker activism in Silicon Valley. 

Kickstarter staff on Tuesday became the first white-collar tech workers to unionize, the culmination of more than a year of organizing.

Workers in the tech industry have long sought to organize, but experts who spoke to The Hill cited Kickstarter, a prominent company in the industry, as a sign of a new shift as union efforts have ramped up in recent years and increasingly attracted white-collar workers.

“I think that it represents a really interesting shift … from a shareholder conception of capitalism to a stakeholder conception of capitalism,” said Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley and the co-creator of a database that tracks worker activity in the tech industry.

The Hill’s Chris Mills Rodrigo tells us why here.

GOOD TO KNOW

• Dozens of House Democrats are urging several major banks not to finance oil drilling and development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), following a similar push by Senate Democrats.

• Lawmakers on opposite sides of the aisle painted contrasting pictures Thursday of the “opportunity zones” created by President Trump’s 2017 tax law speaking at a forum in Charlotte, N.C., hosted by The Hill.

• The University of Southern California (USC) will eliminate tuition for families that earn $80,000 or less, starting with students who enroll this fall.

• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Wednesday issued guidance aimed at helping businesses take advantage of a tax credit for those using equipment to capture carbon from the atmosphere.