Speaking on the floor this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Over the past few weeks, Americans have gotten what seems like a daily dose of bad news about the state of the economy. Whether it’s more joblessness, threats from ratings agencies, the price of gasoline, goods and housing, or a slowdown in manufacturing, people are finding very little reason for optimism.”

Unfortunately, that trend has only continued this week. CNBC reported yesterday, “It’s official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression. Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data. . . . ‘The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression,’ Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, wrote in research for clients. According to Case-Shiller, which provides the most closely followed housing industry data, prices dropped 1.9 percent in the first quarter, a move that the firm interpreted as a clear double dip in prices. Moreover, Dales said prices likely have not completed their downturn.”

And The New York Times writes today, “In the latest sign that the economic recovery may have lost whatever modest oomph it had, more small businesses say that they are planning to shrink their payrolls than say they want to expand them. That is according to a new report released Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group that regularly surveys its membership of small businesses across America. The federation’s report for May showed the worst hiring prospects in eight months. The finding provides a glimpse into the pessimism of the nation’s small firms as they put together their budgets for the coming season, and depicts a more gloomy outlook than other recent (if equally lackluster) economic indicators because this one is forward-looking.”

And even NBC’s David Gregory reacted with incredulity when DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed on “Meet the Press” Sunday that “we were able to, under President Obama’s leadership, turn this economy around.”

Related:

Rasmussen Reports: 49% Blame Bad Economy on Bush’s Recession, 44% on Obama’s Policies

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