Romney: Jobless Rate Over 8 percent Too High
Friday's report that the U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs in December was good news for President Obama and for everyone really - except if you're a Republican running for Obama's job.
GOP presidential primary front-runner Mitt Romney said, "Of course it is good news fewer Americans are out of work, but thirty-five consecutive months of unemployment above 8 percent is no cause for celebration."
There are still 13 million Americans out of work, and the unemployment rate, even with its recent drops, is 8.5 percent, according to the new jobless numbers announced by the U.S. Labor Department.
Romney insisted that the economy lost 1.7 million jobs on Obama's watch. "Eventually our economy will recover, America always does. But President Obama's policies have slowed the recovery and created misery for 24 million Americans who are unemployed, or stuck in part-time jobs when what they really want is full-time work. As president, I will refuse to accept high unemployment as the 'new normal' for our economy," Romney said.
The other Republicans running for Obama's job had equally pessimistic interpretations of the the new numbers. Here is a sampling from the campaign trail in New Hampshire:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia: "I think today's unemployment numbers are a pretty good indicator we are a very, very long way from being a healthy economy. And I think given this president, it's very unlikely that he's going to solve it."
" ... Today's new December unemployment figure doesn't capture the full scale of the tragedy: almost 24 million Americans still unemployed, working part-time for economic reasons, or discouraged from looking for work. The Obama experiment has failed, and it is time to look to proven solutions that have successfully empowered job-creators in the past. ... When we took control of the House in 1995, we moved quickly to balance the budget, reform entitlements, and make the largest capital gains tax cut in history - three years later, 8 million more Americans were going into work every day."
Gingrich ended his statement with a new theme in his campaign - frequent comparisons of himself to former President Ronald Reagan. "Now more than ever, America needs a Reagan conservative in the White House," he said.
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania: "I'm very gratified to see in spite of president Obama's policies that the job market is beginning to pick up a little bit. I think there might just be some optimism that the Republicans are going to take the White House and maybe that's spurring people to take some risks.
"We have a lot of work to do and if you look at this administration and what they've done to put a stiff headwind in the face of the economy recovering, imagine what this economy would do if it didn't have a regulation that was just put in place by the EPA that's going to shut down 60 coal fire power plants ..."
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman: "You're (Obama) never gonna make a strong case until you actually take care of the underlying structural problems. So you know we can piecemeal our way forward in terms of growth, and any growth is good, but I want to break out of the box. I want to launch a manufacturing renaissance in this country which is completely doable. And we're not going to be able to do that until we fundamentally fix taxes and address our regulatory entitlements."
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas: "Well, I think it is going in the right direction but if you measure unemployment by the method that we use to measure it by, it would be twice that, because if you are not looking for work, after four weeks, you could drop out of the work force. As a matter of fact, those numbers actually increase."
"The unemployment rate is probably much closer to 16 or 17 even by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (estimates). That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be very pleased with more jobs, but this financial crisis is far from over because we have a burden of debt, we have destroyed the protective capacity especially of this country, and we can't pay the bills."
" ... I looked at the market today, and the market was down ... So even the people in the marketplace are recognizing that this is not the real turn around that everybody is hoping."