Harry Reid: Good news! America only lost 36,000 jobs today
The government has just released February's unemployment numbers, so it's time for your monthly reminder that the stimulus was and is an epic failure.
And as an added bonus, there's video below of how excited Sen. Harry Reid is that only 36,000 people lost their jobs.
For more, check out the Heritage Foundation's excellent analysis of why unemployment remains so high - it's not people losing their jobs, it's the lack of job creation.
But if out economy is losing fewer jobs this time, then why is our unemployment rate so much higher under President Obama's stewardship of the economy? The answer: job creation. Or actually the lack thereof. Back to the BLS data: through the first six quarters of the 2001 recession 47.6 million jobs were created, while only 40.3 million jobs have been created through the second quarter of 2009. That's a 7.9 million jobs gap. The reason our unemployment rate is so much higher now is low job creation, not high job loss. So why aren't businesses creating jobs? Here is what entrepreneurs have been trying to tell the Obama administration:· At one of President Obama's many jobs summits, Fred Lampropoulos told The New York Times that businesses were uncertain about investment because "there's such an aggressive legislative agenda that businesspeople don't really know what they ought to do." That uncertainty, he added, "is really what's holding back the jobs."
· Dan DiMicco, CEO of steelmaker Nucor Corp, told the Wall Street Journal: "Companies large and small are saying, 'I am not going to do anything until these things - health care, climate legislation - go away or are resolved.'"
· Porta-King CEO Steve Schulte told USA Today his company is not investing because "proposals in Congress to tackle climate change and overhaul health care would raise costs."
