NYC Letter: Shop And Compare -- Job Creation

Day 1,239 of CHOPE
D-minus 217 Days

After selling a $862B stimulus to cap unemployment at 8% and glide to 5% by 2014 (with today's unemployment forecasted at a wistful 5.8%), unemployment has been 8% or above for every full month of Mr. Obama's presidency (41 months).

FIGURE 1
[Graphic Source: Job Impact Of The American Recovery
And Reinvestment Plan, January 9, 2009]

What to do? Spend even more money or curtail government involvement?

Shoppers, see our specials in the left and right aisles.

Left Aisle Same Old Same Old Special.

In the President's Weekly Address this Saturday, Mr. Obama made this fantastic claim.

Last September, I sent Congress a jobs bill full of the kinds of bipartisan ideas* that could have put over a million Americans back to work and helped bolster our economy against outside shocks.

... Since then, Congress has passed a few parts of that jobs bill, like a tax cut that's allowing working Americans to keep more of your paycheck every week. But on most of the ideas that would create jobs and grow our economy, Republicans in Congress haven’t lifted a finger. They’d rather wait until after the election in November.

Regular readers may recall that Mr. Obama waited almost a year after the mid-term elections to gin up his junk jobs bill and it was his Democrat Senate that dilly-dallied and blocked a vote on the bill. Mr. Obama's jobs bill was a cheaper version of the shovel-ready panacea from his pricey failed stimulus bill. We remarked at the time:

What has gone largely unremarked is that Mr. Obama wouldn't have had to deliver a big jobs plan last night if his first big jobs plan had created real jobs over the past two years. We are baffled, perhaps you are too, how this rehashed jobs plan at half the cost is going to best the original $862B flop.

Apparently Mr. Obama thinks not-good-enough will make a compelling argument for a second term.

The economy is growing again, but it’s not growing fast enough. Our businesses have created 4.3 million new jobs over the last 27 months, but we’re not creating them fast enough. And we’re facing some pretty serious headwinds – from the effects of the recent spike in gas prices, to the financial crisis in Europe.

Oh. Yeah. Those perennial headwinds. If Mr. Obama's best argument is that he can't do better if he faces challenges, he needs to find another job.

OBAMA'S RATINGS SINK
ON ECONOMIC DOUBTS

WASHINGTON June12, 2012 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's approval ratings have dipped to their lowest level since January on deep economic worries, wiping out most of his lead in the White House race over Republican rival Mitt Romney, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

The percentage of Americans who approve of Obama's job performance dropped from 50 a month ago to 47, matching his mark in early January. The number who think the country is on the wrong track rose 6 percentage points in a month to 63 percent.

INDEPENDENTS SAY OBAMA
HURTS JOB CREATION

WASHINGTON June 15, 2012 (Reuters) - Fifty-two percent of independents said they agreed with the idea that the president has not helped create more jobs in America, an argument central to Romney's campaign.

Obama appears to have trouble convincing some members of his own party that his administration has been good for jobs: 29 percent of Democrats said they agreed with the claim that he has not been a job creator.

With the unemployment rate at 8.1 percent, the Obama campaign maintains that 4.2 million private-sector jobs have been created since he entered office in January 2009, although roughly as many have been lost.

Right Aisle Pinky Lift Special.

The Republican-controlled House has passed 27 bipartisan* jobs bills that date back to last year. Not one of these bills has been voted on in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

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All items priced equally at one vote. Sorry, only one purchase per shopper. Purchase must be made November 6.

CHOPE.

Clean up in aisle 44.

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* Mr. Obama generalizes historical Republican votes to make his "bipartisan ideas" claim. For example, because Republicans voted for the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, any federal infrastructure spending is a "bipartisan idea". Neither Mr. Obama's stimulus nor his jobs bill enjoyed bipartisan support.

On the other hand, the Republican claim is based on actual Democrat votes for the specific bills.

Posted by Damian at June 16, 2012 11:45 PM