Remembering the ‘Miserable Reality’ and ‘Crisis’ of 4 to 6 Percent Unemployment

Remembering the ‘Miserable Reality’ and ‘Crisis’ of 4 to 6 Percent Unemployment

By Jim Geraghty

Keep in mind, the stimulus was touted as a massive spending project that would keep the national unemployment rate below 8 percent.

Instead, we have had 39 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent, and the national debt is $4,890,570,120,943.74 ($4.89 trillion) more than it was on the day the stimulus passed.

Remember what Barack Obama said about adding just $4 trillion in debt, and over eight years instead of three and a half:

 

As you hear Democrats and members of the media insisting that an unemployment rate of 8.1 percent isn’t that bad — ignoring how much of the drop from the peak is driven by Americans ending their job searches and leaving the workforce — recall how they greeted economic times that look positively bountiful compared to our current state:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, December 21, 2002: “This is a crisis.” Unemployment rate at that time: 6.0 percent.

The New York Daily News, 11/2/2003:

The good news that economic growth leaped from June through September runs smack up against the miserable realities of a 6.1% U.S. unemployment rate and a state jobless rate of 8.8%. Until those figures drop, there is no cause for celebration in the streets. Count reviving the national economy as one mission that President Bush hasn’t accomplished.

Letter from Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle to President Bush, November 20, 2003:

American workers are weathering the effects of an economy where there is only one job for every three individuals searching for a job.

The Boston Globe, March 6, 2004:

In a statement issued from his Washington, D.C., campaign headquarters, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said the latest employment figures show that President Bush has “over-promised and under-delivered” on job growth.

The unemployment rate at that time: 5.6 percent.

November 2006:

Pelosi was not to be outdone, however, firing back at the president who she claimed had “the worst jobs record since the Great Depression,” in spite of Friday’s news that the October jobless rate fell to 4.4 percent, the lowest it has been in more than five years.

 http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/298992/remembering-miserable-reality-and-crisis-4-6-percent-unemployment