Last August, NBC News’ Chuck Todd posed a question to President Barack Obama from Elkhart, Indiana, resident Scott Ferguson: “Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy.” The President responded: “We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that would take effect during a recession. … He’s absolutely right, the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy and …
The August jobs report shows the Obama jobs deficit at 7.5 million workers. The Obama jobs deficit is the difference between the current level of employment and the level he promised his stimulus policies would achieve at the end of 2010. The President boasted that his policies would create 3.5 million jobs, pushing total employment by December 2010 to 137.8 million. As of this report, he is 7.5 million jobs short. By his own metric, the President’s policies have failed. According to today’s jobs report, the economy lost 54,000 jobs …
In April, while campaigning in Pennsylvania, Vice President Joe Biden promised the American people: “I’m here to tell you, some time in the next couple of months, we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month. … We caught a lot of bad breaks on the way down. We’re going to catch a few good breaks because of good planning on the way up.” And for a while it looked like Biden was a genius. In May, the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payroll …
The Commerce Department today revised down its estimate for second quarter gross domestic product from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent. This is not a sign of a weakening economy but a weak economy last spring. The weakness was especially pronounced as the bulk of what growth did occur was due to a building of inventories and a temporary (and now apparently reversed) blip in home sales. Most of the data since the second quarter ended—from industrial orders to labor markets to housing—has worsened further. What we are seeing is an …
According to reports, Christina Romer, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economics Advisers (CEA) is calling it quits. Why does this matter? Another ignored economist leaves Washington with a slightly tattered professional reputation to be received joyously back in the arms of her colleagues in academe having served in a glorious cause—pass the brie and chablis. Well, it matters, at least a little. It matters because the notice given means the CEA still matters. As a CEA alum, I’m encouraged that even in this Administration the outward appearance, at least, …
The Obama Administration announced “Recovery Summer” in June to highlight the expected gains in jobs and economic strength resulting from Obama’s stimulus.. Well, maybe next summer. Initial estimates from the Department of Labor (DOL) suggest the economy shed a whopping 131,000 jobs in July while employment for the prior two months was revised down by 97,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady in August at 9.5 percent despite a drop in employment, because the number of people in the workforce also declined as workers appear to be giving up in …
Today, President Barack Obama will attend a groundbreaking ceremony in Holland, Mich., for a South Korean-owned factory that will make batteries for electric cars. The purpose of the trip is to highlight the “success” of the President’s $862 billion economic stimulus package which the White House claimed yesterday has already “saved or created” 3 million jobs. Specifically, this factory is being subsidized by $151 million of stimulus funds from an even larger $2 billion honey pot of stimulus money set aside for electric car battery investments. This one plant is …
Last week the Obama administration began rolling out new campaign titled, we kid you not, “Yes, we did.” Did what exactly? Waste nearly a trillion dollars on an economic stimulus that by every objective measure has completely failed to perform as advertised? Then yes you did. A new CBS poll out today shows that 74 percent of Americans believe the Obama stimulus either damaged the economy or had no effect. Clearly the White House is on a different planet than the rest of the country. In another dispatch from Planet …
It looks like the Obama spin machine is at it again, this time launching a concerted effort to rebut reports this week that President Barack Obama is anti-business. But given Obama’s record of stoking government intervention in the private sector and creating an environment of uncertainty poisonous to business growth, hiring and expansion, it’s no wonder the President is branded with an anti-business scarlet letter. The storyline began in The Washington Post, where columnist Fareed Zakaria endeavored to find out why America’s 500 largest nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 …
Heritage analysts Rea Hederman and James Sherk write about the June Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment reportr: “(BLS) announced that net employment increased by 431,000 in May, and that the unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent. While this appears to be good news, 411,000 of those new jobs are temporary government jobs associated with hiring for the decennial census. The private sector created only 41,000 jobs. More Americans exiting the labor force also had an effect on the drop in the unemployment rate. The private sector …
