Following up on the recent jobs data, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi commented that more jobs were created under Obama in 2010 than were created during the entire 8-year Bush administration from 2001-2009.
Think Progress notes:
Indeed, from February 2001, Bush’s first full month in office, through January 2009, his last, the economy added just 1 million jobs. By contrast, in 2010 alone, the economy added at least 1.1 million jobs. This chart, produced by Pelosi’s office, demonstrates the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration on jobs.
As the Wall Street Journal noted in the last month of Bush’s term, the former president had the “worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.” And job creation under Bush was anemic long before the recession began. Bush’s supply-side economics “fostered the weakest jobs and income growth in more than six decades,” along with “sluggish business investment and weak gross domestic product growth,” the Center for American Progress’ Joshua Picker explained. “On every major measurement” of income and employment, “the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms,” the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein observed, parsing Census data.
The next step for Obama to lead us out of the Great Recession is to resist public sector unemployment. He needs to oppose budget cuts, layoffs, and hiring freezes in all levels of government. He needs to push for tax increases for the rich to balance the state budgets so there won't be so much pressure to increase job losses in the public sector.
ReplyDeletePart of this is through the legislative process, but a bigger part is using the presidency as a platform to speak out against the class warfare and phony "budget crises" that the rich are inflicting on the rest of us.