The unemployment rate rose again in June, reaching 9.2 percent. That’s nearly 3 percent higher than what you promised it would be if Congress passed your $814,000,000,000 stimulus bill. Approximately 2.8 million people have lost their jobs since you took office. Further, the labor participation rate is the lowest in 30 years and long term unemployment is the worst it’s been since the middle of the Great Depression. In fact, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, if the number of people looking for work today were the same as it had been at the beginning of your presidency, the unemployment rate would be over 11 percent. Average weekly earnings and hours worked are down also. Accordingly, consumer confidence is in the tank.
Despite the above, your campaign chief, David Plouffe, maintains that voters won’t base their decisions on the unemployment rate.
To the extent Plouffe’s statement isn’t whistling-past-the-graveyard campaign rhetoric, is it a reflection of your administration’s resignation that you’re wholly incapable of positively affecting the unemployment rate?
Your economic policies have been in place for two-and-a-half years now. How much longer before the promised salutary effects kick in?
Given that on a broad range of metrics, economists maintain that this is the worst recovery since the Great Depression, when will you change your policies that have proven to be, at best, ineffective?
What do you expect the unemployment rate to be in November 2012? What do you expect the unemployment rate to be on January 21, 2013?
Today's report was truly abysmal, but I predict it will only get worse from here.
Barely 65% of the population is now employed. That's pathetic. What's worse, hourly earnings are decreasing. Price continute go up on commodities, including food and energy, and at an accelerated pace. Our earnings (for those of us lucky enough to be employed) are going down not only in inflation-adjusted terms but also in nominal terms.
We're about to fall off a cliff. This is worse than the Carter years. Much, much worse.
Obama will of course not win re-election, but the real question is whether we will survive economically when November, 2012 comes around.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe more egregious promise was that unemployment would rise to 9% if the stimulus was NOT passed!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQuestion for Mr. Kirsanow: what would you have done to improve job growth in the aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the Depression, which began in 2008? Taxes didn't increase; where's the empirical evidence that drastic spending cuts would have improved the job situation? Would spending cuts have saved the housing market, which is, by all measures, a major drain on the economy?
Specifics, please, rather than loaded questions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, let's discuss why a theoretical NRO recovery plan wouldn't work, instead of discussing why President Obama's actually implemented recovery programs haven't worked.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKirsanow isn't in charge, Kevin. But Obama is and ought to have these questions asked.
Why do you object so vociferously to relevant questions being posed to our chief elected leader? Do you think he needs protecting? Do you think it's wrong to ask questions?
And not that I probably need to ask, as I'm sure you don't have any, but being Obama's waterboy as you are, what are your answers to these questions? You constantly nip at Kirsanow's heels saying he's asking illegitimate questions, but what are your answers?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBuster: When you criticize any president's policies as having failed, it necessarily implies there are other strategies that would have succeeded. This is particularly true when you and others continue to say Obama has failed to put us back into "prosperity" (hopefully not the bubble-driven prosperity of the 00s) and Republicans would have done a better job.
So, make your case; I'm willing to hear it. What exactly should this administration have done?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI see. Obama gets a pass on his economic performance because there's simply nothing he can do about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKM,
I agree that policy critiques should acknowledge that the policy's merits should be based on what options are available to a decisionmaker, not based on some abstract ideal.
If you're asking what the President should've done, I'd recommend going back and reading the contemporaneous proposals and critiques from 2008-2009.
If you're asking what the President should do now, National Review magazine published a symposium on how to improve the economy in its July 4th edition, which you can access through their NR Digital service.
If you're asking me to posit and then demonstrate the superiority of a counter factual hypothetical, prepare to be disappointed, since it is not only a moot point but it wouldn't be provable by definition.
However, I do think the President's critics can and are proving that the strategy implemented by the President to improve the economy has failed on its own terms.
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