Obama and his Administration are
Playing
Fast and Loose with the Jobless
Numbers
Obama and his Administration are playing games with the
jobless numbers to confuse the voting public.
When Obama, Biden and the Democrats say they created 4.5 million jobs, they
are downright lying. In February 2009,
right after Obama and Biden were sworn in, the number of Americans working was
132,837,000 in non-farm jobs. In August
2012 that number was 133,300,000, for an increase of 463,000 non-farm
jobs. Two of the smoke and mirrors
tricks that the Obama/Biden Administration have been using are (1) to play fast
and loose with the seasonal adjustments and (2) to revise the prior months’ job
numbers downward, so that the most recent month always seems better than it
really is. For example, in the most
recent report for August 2012 the Obama Administration reported 96,000 new
non-farm jobs, but the July jobs number was lowered from 163,000 to 141,000 for
a reduction of 22,000 and the June number was revised downward from 64,000 to
45,000 for a reduction of 19,000. That
adds up to a 41,000 reduction in the jobs base just over those two months. So the real increase in September adjusted
for the July reduction would be 72,000 new non-farm jobs and adjusted for the
June and July reductions would be 51,000 new jobs in September 2012. By failing to take into consideration the
various adjustments to the jobs numbers over the last 43 months and only
counting the new jobs allegedly created, without subtracting the downward
adjustments that have been made, the Obama Administration has fraudulently
stretched the jobs increase during its administration from 463,000 to 4.5
million. (Eamon Javers, CNBC Business
News, 9/7/12.)
Furthermore, if the workforce participation rate was the same
as it was when Obama was sworn in, the unemployment rate would be 11.2%, rather
than the 8.1% claimed last month. In
fact, 368,000 people left the labor force during the month of August or almost
4 people left the labor force for every job allegedly created. The labor participation rate is at a 31 year
low of 63.5%. Even if one went back to
the labor participation of only one month ago of 63.7%, the unemployment rate
would have gone up to 8.4%, rather than down to 8.1%. The Obama Administration had claimed that the
unemployment rate would never go above 7% and would be at 5.5% today, if
Congress would only give them a stimulus package that will cost the taxpayers a
trillion dollars, counting interest expenses.
“Weak Job Growth, Labor Force Exodus Signal Major Woes,” Investor’s
Business Daily (“IBD”), 9/10/12, p.1.
If one counts the underemployed and those who have given up looking, the
percentage would be closer to 17.1%.
There are 23 million Americans who are unemployed or part time/underemployed,
but want full time jobs, but cannot find them.
According to the US Department of Labor, during the downturn,
60% of the jobs lost were considered mid-wage jobs ($13.84 to $21.13 per hour),
while during the alleged “recovery” 58% of the new jobs were low wage jobs
($7.66 to $13.83 per hour). According to
Obama’s own Treasury, Labor, Energy and Agriculture Departments, under Obama’s
Presidency unemployment rose from 7.8% to 8.1%, median income went down $4,019,
gasoline rose from $1.84 to $3.82 per gallon and people on food stamps went
from 31.9 to 46.7 million. With 46.7
million, or one in seven, Americans on food stamps, people taking 99 weeks of
unemployment insurance, more people claiming disability than ever before and
about 15% of the population below the poverty line, Obama cannot honestly claim
his policies have created a good economy.
African Americans have fared ever worse the rest of the population with
a poverty rate of 27.6%. Furthermore,
contrary to Obama income redistribution programs and attacks on the rich,
inequality has also increased between blacks and whites and between rich and
poor. “Obamanomics: The Results Are In,”
IBD, 9/13/12, p.1. Furthermore,
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in his Jackson Hole speech, warned that this
prolonged high unemployment could lead to structural damage to the
economy. We now have 5,033,000 million
Americans who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.
When one also reduces Obama's performance by all of the
stimulus that the Federal Reserve provided (extended low interest rates, QE1,
QE2, Twist 1, Twist 2, expanding its balance sheet and the monetary base by
some $2.3 trillion), Obama's economic performance is obviously abysmal. Obamanomics has been such a failure, that Ben
Bernanke and the Fed just announced QE3, which will include open ended buying
of $40 billion of mortgage backed securities and will continue buying $45
billion of treasury bonds in the ongoing operation twist. “Fed Set To Launch Big New Bond Buys To
Bolster Growth,” IBD 9/14/12, p.1.
Furthermore, half of the jobs that have been created since
the recession ended in June of 2009, have been created in Texas, where the
policies are the polar opposite of Obama’s.
Texas has no income tax, has right-to-work laws, and passed tort
reform. In fact, states with Republican
Governors average unemployment rates that are 1% lower than the national
average. The Republican state policies on
the surface makes Obama’s miserable performance not seem quite as bad as it
actually is, until one examines where and why the jobs are actually being
created.
Obama and his Democrats in Congress have not passed a budget
in over 3 years (over 1,200 days and climbing), even though the law requires
them to do so every year. This failure is despite the fact that they had
overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress for two years and still have
a majority in the Senate. Furthermore,
Obama’s own proposed budgets could not even get one vote from either party in
either the House or the Senate. Since
the Republicans took control of the House, they have done their job and
repeatedly passed budgets. However,
Obama’s ally in the Senate, Harry Reid has refused to act on them or pass his
own version, so that the differences could be resolved in a joint
committee. Instead, Obama and the
Democrats have just run deficits of $1.3 to $1.5 trillion a year. Obama has increased the National Debt by over
$5 trillion in just over three and a half years until the debt now exceeds $16
trillion dollars or more than our GDP. With
the recent United States debt rating downgrade by Egan-Jones Rating Co., the US
debt has been downgraded twice due to Obama’s spending and borrowing policies. These two downgrades are the first US debt
downgrades in history. If Obama
continues on his spending and borrowing spree, there will be more debt rating
downgrades.
When Obama was sworn in, the United States was ranked number
one for global competitiveness. Each
year that he has been in office our global competitiveness has dropped. Last year we ranked 5th in this
area and this year we rank 7th.
Clearly, Obama’s policies have hurt our global competitiveness and those
policies should be ended.
And as far as the “he inherited a bad economy" myth,
Obama, working with ACORN as a community organizer, helped Bill Clinton destroy
the economy through Clinton’s amendments to Carter’s Community Reinvestment
Act, Clinton’s leveraging up Fannie and Freddie to an almost 50 to 1 debt to
equity ratio and his requiring Fannie and Freddie to make 42% of their loans to
low and subprime borrowers. These
terrible Clinton programs permitted people like Barack Obama, working with
ACORN as community organizers and using the Saul Alinsky methods, to extort
banks to make loans to people who could not possibly pay them back.
Clinton lied at the Democratic Convention when he said nobody
could have turned around an economy as bad as the one in January 2009 in only four
years. Reagan turned around an even
worse economy in four years. Within four
years of taking office, Reagan reduced unemployment from 10.8% to 7.0% and
thereafter reduced unemployment to 5.0%.
Only the lying Democratic spin doctors could claim that Obama has done a
good job and deserves another term.
