President Obama is betting on America not to understand how bad the economy is:
The White House urged Americans unsettled by the latest weak jobs figures — just 80,000 added to the payrolls in June — not to “read too much” into any single monthly report. President Barack Obama, chasing votes on a bus tour in Ohio, was expected to address the latest sign of an anemic recovery that threatens his shot at reelection.
“While the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, much more remains to be done to repair the damage from the financial crisis and deep recession that followed,” Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
Americans don’t need to read “too much” into a single monthly report. They can go back about 40 or 41 months and see that Obama promised that his stimulus would keep unemployment below 8%, but unemployment remains stuck at 8.2%. Americans can go back to 2010 and see that Nancy Pelosi promised that ObamaCare would create millions of jobs. It hasn’t. Or Americans could go back four years and see that Obama promised to cut the deficit in half; reality is, he has tripled it.
There is no need to read too much into any Obama-era jobs report. They’re all pretty bad, and every recent one has come out bad and then been revised downward.
Update: The Romney campaign reacted to the White House’s statement with one word: “Stunning.”
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