I kind of feel bad for the guy who writes the White House blog. He must be very, very tired. So tired that he has to recycle old themes repeatedly (it’s Bush’s fault) and make sure no blame is placed on the shoulders of his boss, Obama.
With a dismal jobs report for May and unemployment up from April, the White House immediately points back 5 years.
There is much more work that remains to be done to repair the damage caused by the financial crisis and deep recession that began at the end of 2007.
Then, he talks about Obama’s plans for recovery.
In the American Jobs Act and in the State of the Union Address, the President put forward a number of proposals to create jobs and strengthen the economy, including proposals that would put teachers back in the classroom and cops on the beat, and put our nation’s construction workers back on the job rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. The President has also proposed a “To-Do List” of actions that Congress should take to create jobs and help restore middle-class security. This includes eliminating tax incentives to ship jobs overseas, cutting red tape so responsible homeowners can refinance, giving small businesses that increase employment or wages a 10 percent income tax credit, investing in affordable clean energy, and helping returning veterans find work.
Too bad he doesn’t mention the fact that none of Obama’s proposals have garnered a single “yea” vote in the House or Senate in either party over the last two years.
And how’s the budget working out? Paul Ryan got it right when he pointed out the bicameral and bipartisan rejection of Obama’s ideas.
I think the best part of the blog post, however, was the summary:
As the Administration stresses every month, the monthly employment and unemployment figures can be volatile, and employment estimates can be subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.
At least they got that right…
The report comes a month after the government reported that just 115,000 new jobs were added in April, a number that helped contribute to a general malaise about economic growth.
Even that number was worse than thought: The BLS revised the April number down to 77,000.
The White House report was written by Alan B. Krueger, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
UPDATE: Jay Cost, over at the Weekly Standard, chimes in on the White House response: Not Good Enough