President Obama needs to stop making excuses and shifting blame for this anemic, if at all present, “recovery.”
The July jobs report was grim on almost all fronts. Although more jobs were added this month, Americans are entering the workforce and are unable to find jobs. As a result of this continued anemia on the part of the US economy, the unemployment rate increased from 8.2% to 8.3%. Or, as President Obama’s campaign was quick to clarify, the jobless rate is now 8.254%.
This was just one example of the kind of petty games to which the president and his staff had to resort to in order to explain away this latest indicator of the president’s complete failure on the economy. In his speech, the president ignored the increase in the unemployment rate and simply said that we have “more work to do” before the economy recovers.
Quite frankly, I was insulted. Referring to the Obama campaign clarifying that unemployment was now at 8.254% instead of 8.3%, a Republican spokesman voiced my complaints quite well: “23 million people struggling for work isn’t a rounding error. And the White House’s attempts to argue [this] show just how out of touch they are.” There are Americans suffering out there day in and day out because of the job-killing policies of our president, yet Mr. Obama cannot spare more than ten seconds out of his speech to address the grim reality of the American job market. Instead, he attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of heedless American voters and paint a completely different vision of America, a nation not in recession and not suffering economically under the brunt of overregulation and poor policy. Rather than trivializing the rounding of an already generous unemployment number (which only counts unemployment among those actually in the job market, not overall unemployment), President Obama should be honest with the American people about the dire situation that we are in and take his share of responsibility for it. He promised to own the economy not so long ago, and I would admire the president far more if he would act like an adult and take responsibility for his failed policy.
Speaking of failed policy, the president also reiterated his push for higher taxes on Americans making $250,000 or more per year. I can distinctly recall the president saying that it was not a good idea to raise taxes during an economic downturn…hmm… Anyway, I was very disappointed to see him continuing this unholy buffeting of the issue of tax rates. I was also not happy to hear him telling a crowd during a campaign speech that Romney’s tax cuts would mean that middle-class families would have to pay more in taxes, which – if you didn’t know – is an outright lie, if not an outrageous and uneducated assumption. But since when have I been happy with this president? *sigh* I guess we’ll have to wait until November…
