President Obama’s Remarkable Statement on Jobs: “We Don’t Know Yet What Happened”

President Obama’s Remarkable Statement on Jobs: “We Don’t Know Yet What Happened”

Posted by Michael Ricci on June 07, 2011

While House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) talks about “A Plan for America’s Job Creators” today at the Rotary Club in Middletown, Ohio, the “competence” narrative the White House was pushing about a month ago is falling apart after a disappointing jobs report and a lackluster response on the part of the president and his economic team. A new ABC News/Washington Post survey shows that disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy has “reached new highs.”

Asked yesterday to explain the jobs report he failed to address on Friday, President Obama said “we don’t know yet what happened in terms of this particular blip,” half-hearted spin that has already been contradicted by the government official whose job it is to collect the unemployment data. That’s not all that has Americans – especially those looking for work – scratching their heads:
NO MORE ECONOMISTS: A day after the president’s top economist, Austan Goolsbee, went on national television to reassure the American public about the jobs picture, the White House announced his departure. Goolsbee, The New York Times notes, is “the only economist left” on the president’s core team. His is the latest in a series of high-profile departures for the president’s economic team dating back to last July, when budget director Peter Orszag left.

NO MORE DAILY ECONOMIC BRIEFINGS: The White House admitted yesterday that the president no longer holds daily economic briefings. The meetings, which were announced with fanfare at the first press briefing of the Obama administration, have disappeared from his schedule altogether, according to The Hill. The sessions just “petered out,” the White House told the paper.

NO MORE NEW IDEAS: Friday’s jobs report drove some of the Democrats who help President Obama run Washington to call for new ‘stimulus’ spending. The day before the report came out, the president pledged to fellow Washington Democrats he was firmly committed to imposing job-crushing tax hikes and would “draw a firm line” on the issue. These are exactly the kind of signals that foster the “lingering uncertainty” causing employers large and small alike to hold back.
This is where Republicans’ “Plan for America’s Job Creators” comes in. Unveiled last month, this blueprint builds on the Pledge to America with measures focused on removing government obstacles to private sector job growth – the kind of growth the president’s ‘stimulus’ promised but failed to deliver. (No worries, Ellie Mae is still on the hunt…)