Morning Bell: The Obama Jobs Deficit
Conn Carroll /
This past Friday the Department of Labor released the nation’s employment’s figures showing that employers shed 611,000 private sector jobs in the first three months of this year. This brought the unemployment rate to 8.9% and revealed that in President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, employment has dropped about 2 million jobs. Of course, President Obama’s policies cannot be blamed for all of these job losses. They are due to the Great Global Recession, which was well underway before President Obama was sworn in. The Obama administration will be accountable for our nation’s economic recovery and it is important that we establish some unassailable benchmarks to which to hold them accountable.
The Obama administration has shown from the very beginning that they have no interest in being held accountable for how their policies will affect our nation’s economic recovery, hence the Orwellian “create or save” mantra they first unveiled with their economic stimulus package. The White House Council of Economic Advisers continues that farce today with a report claiming to show that no matter what the actual employment numbers show, their computer simulation has already proved that the stimulus will create or save 3.5 million jobs by 2010. White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christina Romer defended these numbers Saturday telling CSPAN: “Accuracy has always been the main thing, not the political back-and-forth.” Economists not employed by President Obama are not buying this claim. University of Chicago economics professor Steven Davis told USA Today that the “saved or created” line is “a very clever device for providing future political cover.”