Our Excuser-In-Chief

We haven’t yet said anything about today’s disastrous employment news. What is to be said? Unemployment is up to 9.2%, with underemployment much higher. A mere 18,000 jobs were added in June, less than one-fifth of what economists expected. Job growth in April and May was revised downward by 44,000. Another 272,000 Americans gave up and dropped out of the labor force. The news was unrelentingly bad.

One wonders whether, when the history of this era is written, today might go down as a turning point. Americans have been steadily giving up on the Obama administration, as evidence accumulates that its policies have failed and it has no solutions to the nation’s economic problems. Not only that, its purported solutions–most of which are really just pretenses for government takeovers–have made the situation worse rather than better.

If today was a turning point, it isn’t only because of the dismal news. Equally important was President Obama’s response to the awful numbers. Once again, after two and a half years in office, he can do nothing except make excuses, deflect blame, and try to turn bad news into political opportunity:

Beset by a weak jobs report, President Barack Obama on Friday called for swift action by Congress to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, saying the uncertainty over the debt ceiling has hindered hiring in the private sector.

This is a ridiculous claim. Many factors deter private hiring, some of them needlessly imposed by the administration–excessive regulation, Obamacare, harassment of businesses like Boeing on behalf of unions, and so on. The only issue with respect to the debt ceiling is whether the Democrats’ wild spending spree will be reined in. If so, that will, indeed, spur growth in the private sector.

He also listed natural disasters, high gas prices, state and local budget cuts and the fiscal crisis in Greece.

Most Americans realize that high gas prices are largely the result of the Democrats’ blocking the development of our own energy resources for the last 25 years. And not long ago, the idea that Greece could drag down America’s economy would have been laughable. That was before Barack Obama down-sized America.

“The economic challenges we face weren’t created overnight and they’re not going to be solved overnight,” he said.

Of course, no one ever asked Obama to solve the nation’s economic problems overnight; we just hoped he wouldn’t make them worse. That hope was in vain. It has become obvious to almost everyone, I think, that we have a failed president with nothing to offer but excuses.

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