In the article GOP hardens resolve on debt talks after poor jobs report there is a quote from House Speaker John Boehner.
“Where are the jobs?” House Speaker John Boehner asked at a press conference today after the Labor Department reported that the the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June. The economy generated just 18,000 net new jobs last month, making it the slowest month for job creation in nine months.
He is great at misleadingly citing statistics to deflect the blame from himself and try to put it on Obama.
I had already done some other reading, Stocks Fall 1% on Weak Jobs Data, before coming across Boehner’s misleading remarks.
The U.S. economy only added 18,000 jobs in June after gaining 25,000 jobs in May, according to the Labor Department’s report, which was well below the increase of 80,000 that the market had been expecting. The private sector added 57,000 payrolls, missing projected additions of 110,000, according to Briefing.com.
If the total added was 18,000, but the additions from the private sector was 57,000, then one would have to assume that 39,000 jobs were cut from the public sector. One might also assume that the number of private sector jobs created would have been higher if we had not lost the consumer spending of the 39,000 people who lost their government jobs. Had it not been for Republican obstructionism, the job numbers for this month could have been above 57,000 instead of the net 18,000 we got. If the private sector had hit the target of 110,000 mentioned in the article and the government had not laid of 39,000, the job gains would have been 110,000. Thanks, Republicans, you have been doing an excellent job of holding back the recovery. You Republicans cut off as much as 90% of the job growth and then blame Obama. Outrageous!!!
Indeed if you follow one of the links in the above article, you come to June Jobs Increase Falls Short.
However, Canally noted that the report was a “half empty, half full” picture. Although jobs in state and local governments dropped, retail and leisure sectors saw strong gains, Canally explained. He also added that the drop in manufacturing hours worked might be a bit “fluky” given that ISM’s reading on manufacturing was much better last week.
Why do I say that Boehner is misleading? The cutback of jobs in the public sector is exactly what Boehner wants to happen. He does not want the Federal government to keep supporting state budgets which would have prevented these layoffs. In having to balance their budgets, and with their refusal to raise taxes on the wealthy, the states have had to layoff workers. Thus the absence of net job creation comes exactly from the type of policies Boehner is proposing and not from the Obama policies that Boehner rejects.
Compare my analysis of the job numbers above with the above video of President Obama’s response today to those numbers. What a weak response he has made, when a strong one was needed. At about 1:50 into the video he did mention state and local budget cuts, and that was it for that topic. The President just does not get it, and I don’t think he ever will.
It is apparent to me that this President has just run out of steam and fight.
I saw a a comment on one of the boards that I read that really nails the issue. Our problem when we elected Obama was that we hired a mediator when we needed an advocate. President Obama is not the right person at the right time. We need a strong challenger in the Democratic presidential primary in 2012. This challenger needs to be an extremely strong advocate. If she or he foolishly talks about getting cooperation from the Republicans, we need to write that candidate off immediately.
Earlier this evening I was watching BBC news. They started talking about the job numbers and focused on the 18,000 net jobs lost. They did not dig into the composition of those number to give us any insight. At least they didn’t before I turned them off in disgust.
Later I was watching NBC news where there was a promise that they would dig in. When they brought forth Maria Bartiromo to comment, I could just not stand it anymore. It was better to watch the movie on TCM about the development of the British Spitfire fighter plane before World War II than it was to continue to watch the idiocy that passes for news (at least in this country and in Britain.)