One claim Republicans make to support their proposition that the country's worse off than it was "four years ago" is that there are fewer jobs in America today than there were when President Obama took office.
"[H]e hasn't created one single net new job since he's been president," Mitt Romney's spokeswoman Andrea Saul said on MSNBC Tuesday afternoon.
If the Romney campaign insists on doing this again, fine, let's go ahead and do this again.
Mitt Romney recently said it's only fair to give a new president "at least six months or a year" to get put together an economic plan, assemble a team, and put his or her "policies in place." With that in mind, if we acknowledge President Obama took office in the midst of catastrophic conditions that weren't his fault, and we don't include his first year against him, 3.88 million jobs -- and 4.44 million private-sector jobs -- have been created in less than three years.
That's not using Obama's standard; that's using Romney's standard.
The only way Team Romney's talking point makes sense is if you include job losses that happened immediately after Obama became president -- an argument Romney himself once dismissed as "silly" -- and include public-sector job losses that Republicans say they support.
What's more, if we're only measuring employment by total non-farm payrolls, we're already above where we were in January 2009.
Besides, this is a GOP talking point with a shelf life -- barring a sharp deterioration in the U.S. economy, Obama's "net" job totals will enter positive territory no matter when one starts the clock.
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The two most interesting number: 4.44M private sector jobs, and 3.88M overall. Republicans want to take credit for the private sector jobs, but those are created by economic conditions, not generosity of "job creators". The loss of public sector jobs, however, are primarily due to Republican ideology and political gamesmanship.
Gosh so the man famous for starting the outsourcing of jobs and for closing down factories wants to bash Obama on jobs? Is anybody else here a little worried about the way so many people seem so easily duped into believing such bull? Am I the only one wondering just what poison or device is being used to drive people into madness? Do you still drink water supplied by the city? Do you eat at fast food restaurants? I do and I am not really worried about it, yet sometimes ...
We have to be concerned, especially with obscene amounts of $$ the R's will be spending. If they continue with the lying it could do them in or at least create doubt. The best messageing from Dem surrogates I've ever heard & at just the right time was refreshing, to say the least. Each speech kept building for the next one.. It was a great beginning, now we have to keep vigilant & convince. We are, afterall on the side of the middleclass, which is on the right side of history. Get fired up!
While Mitt and company try the net job angle we need only let people watch the GOP nut jobs.
Obama has not created one new job since he failed to invent a time machine in time to go back and save the Janesville plant from the future President Obama becoming illegally elected by socialist voters trampling the constitution on their way to cast their fraudulent ballots.
Obama also took that time machine back to when he was born and put that bogus birth announcement in the Hawaii papers!
Yesterday on the Norman Goldman radio show I heard audio of then-gov Romney defending his jobs record to the MA media. He gave himself a YEAR into his admin of wiggle room, claiming that it took at least that long for him to initiate a turnaround.
Somebody needs to take that audio and make a commercial.
If you lose 5M jobs and only add 4.5M, is that a gain? If you are not taking ownership of that, then BO had nothing to do with killing OSBL, since that started under Bush, or any of the bailouts started under Bush as well, can't have it both ways.
Who lost 5M? Sorry, numb skull, your number floating in free space unmoored to context is not convincing. We know who lost the jobs. We know when they started coming back. And we also know that the total private sector jobs created over the ENTIRE W 8 years was, ..., wait it it, NEGATIVE. The public sector, ironically, did quite well. Bet that stings.
Wow, name calling from the left, so surprised, but why didn't you tell me to turn off Fox News, you must be slipping. OK, then he can't take credit for the things started under Bush, so no "I took out OSBL", right? We know who did that.
I don't think of it as name-calling when it comes to you. I think of it as getting the facts out there.
And you're wrong again. You CAN take credit for carrying on things started by somebody else. If you indeed carry them out. Not sure just how many things you'd want to give credit to W for that Obama continued.
We sure need to give W credit for all those job losses. He and his Administration made the regulatory decisions that got us there and here. And the worldwide Great Recession? Not difficult for those with a sense of history to draw a straight line directly to Ronald Reagan with W the idiot that made the final decisions to get us to the finish line.
As for bin Laden, do you really need to be reminded that W had lost interest. There's some famous quotes we could dig up and enjoy.
My apologies for forgetting to tell you to turn off Fox, you Fox-educated wingnut ignoramus. So, ..., turn off Fox because watching nothing will get you closer to reality than watching propaganda.
Neither of you have given any evidence to support or deny the 5M figure, btw. We're trying to encourage fact-checking and reason over emotional responses in politics, and this isn't helping anyone.
smedrick30 . . . The calculation of the number of jobs lost is a matter of timing. Steve has posted the graph showing monthly job losses/gains here many times. Rachel and other MSNBC hosts have displayed it during their shows. Here is a link to it for your edification:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/03/09/10621597-jobs-picture-continues-to-improve-economy-adds-227k?lite
One important point is that, while the job losses under Bush intensified late in 2008 as the economy crashed, his +/- job creation numbers were negative for ALL of 2008. This was already in the works well before things really started to fall apart.
Folks like Eric want to attribute job losses as early as January of 2009 to Obama, which is patently silly. More realistic assessments start a few months after that, acknowledging that there wasn't much he could do until he had a chance to take some kind of action. Using that metric, his job loss numbers are well under 5M and his net job creation numbers are quite positive.
After so many times, it gets tedious to keep pointing out the same things to people who will NOT take facts and reason for an answer, but instead prefer and continue to simply state numbers floating out in free random space unmoored to context. It simply gets to the point where insults are appropriate. And at this point in Eric's case, name-calling is simply getting the facts out there for that learning-challenged buffoon.
And the clock for Obama should only start after he had a reasonable chance to do something, and it should stop after Republicans made it clear they would obstruct any other actions to do something about putting out the fire that they started.
When Robme speaks about "job creation" I think he's talking about those jobs he created in China & India. When he speaks of "Job creation" in regards to the President, WE the PEOPLE are supposed to forget that Congress hasn't even taken up the JOBS bill the President sent them over 1 year ago....
Dear Rachel & Steve, capcha can be a pain, but at times you could almost wish it was here as in your former efforts, just sayin.
No. The sooner Captcha goes away, the better. Unless they make it so that you can actually read the thing you're supposed to retype.
Yeah, don't you love it when the Captcha is even in another character set, maybe Cyrillic or Arabic? Wouldn't you think a company developing internet software would understand 'language localization'? Nah, that's a reality construct - maybe they're Repubs.
I'm really tired of people, intentionally or not, neglecting to point out the obstruction by Republicans to help with the remedy to the disastrous problems they caused over 30+ years.
Do not let any opportunity go by to remind people of the nauseating obstruction Republicans have participated in and did so as if the problems they caused were less important than solving those problems and not even close to the importance they put on their own political plight.
This can NOT be forgotten. This can NOT be let go.
Let's put that all in historical perspective:
So under Bush in the first term (same amount of time as Obama) he had lost 1.7 million private sector jobs but added 771,000 government jobs.
Obama has added 332,000 private sector jobs and lost 648,000 government jobs.
So using the Republican standard how did George W Bush get a second term?
And those lost government jobs are because of Republican obstruction and austerity. Just the way they want it. This economy is owned by Boehner and his House GOTea.
We're back to Steve's "House on Fire" post from yesterday. Or my "out-of-control locomotive speeding downhill" analogy (see my comment on that thread).
Fortunately, based on polls, a majority of Americans still realize who put into motion the events that led to huge job losses in 2008 and the early part of 2009.
Another way to see the "Time Machine" question:
Would we be better off going back to November 2008 or November 2000?
Or, given current conditions, how many people would opt to go back to November 2008, or even January 20, 2009? I'm betting not many.
I wish I understood your reply. Could you elaborate?
[Crickets]
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