The May unemployment numbers should have the Obama campaign rethinking their slogan “Forward.” The unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent and only 69,000 were lucky enough to find new jobs. This happened after the April numbers had to be revised down from 115,000 to 77,000. These anemic numbers prove that President Obama’s decades old liberal policies are simply not working to get our economy moving again. The only direction we are moving in is backwards.
Joe Heller / Green Bay Press-Gazette (click to view more cartoons by Heller)
The partisans at MSNBC were trying to spin the May unemployment numbers before they even came out, trying to claim that the economy was getting better in presidential swing states. Well, when 8:30 AM EST came around, the news out of the Labor Department was not good for struggling Americans. Once again the “experts” were “shocked” at the bad news. But if you look at the legacy of the liberal Big Government agenda, this shouldn’t be a surprise. The truth is there is no recovery and won’t be with this President who is married to this economy killing ideology.
We are heading into the Obama Administration’s fourth annual “Recovery Summer.” Every year we are promised the president will have a “laser-like” focus on jobs. The fact is that President Obama is more worried about raising $1 billion for his reelection than getting jobs created.
When Obama complains on the campaign trail that his efforts are being stymied by Congress, the media inevitably neglect to mention that the Senate is controlled by Democrats. The Republican-led House of Representatives has passed 27 job-creation bills that have gone on to die in Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate. While Obama waxes on about a “to-do” list, Democrats in the Senate dismiss it and point to their own priorities. Senate Democrats have not produced a budget since March 2009 and yet the President still tries to paint the Republican Party as the roadblock. This strategy is not working. How long before the panic sets in for the Left and they take this campaign straight down the gutter?
Families across America are hurting, but the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress have responded with failure after failure. Let’s not forget Obama promised in 2009 that if his Stimulus Bill passed, we would not see the unemployment rate go above 8 percent. Fast forward to 2012 when we have seen 40 straight months of 8 percent and above unemployment, the longest period of time since the Great Depression. In May, the CBO revised its estimate of the cost of the stimulus bill up from $787 billion to $831 billion. It also reported that the stimulus added only 200,000 to 1.5 million new jobs. According to James Pethokoukis, that equates to $4.1 million to $540,000 per job! This is what Obama style government intervention looks like.
What does President Obama have to show for his three and a half years in office? For all the talk of a Republican “war on women,” CNSNews.com reports that 766,000 more women are unemployed today than when Obama was sworn in. The Obama Administration is not prioritizing women at the most important level – fixing our economy. The youth of America are being similarly hit, with more than half of them under or unemployed. The labor rate participation is near record lows at 63.8 percent, with over 88 million people out of work. Under and unemployment nationally went up 0.3 to 14.8 percent. With economic indicators getting worse, many fear we are heading into a double-dip recession.
President Obama himself has said, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” He has even admitted that people are not better off than they were four years ago.
Mr. President, we agree with you. America can do better. It is time to move forward with new leadership who will finally focus on our economy and restoring America to greatness.
