Topics Today in and outside of Washington, D.C. - Deficit and Unemployment.Deficit: The AP reports this afternoon, “A new estimate puts the deficit for the just-completed 2012 budget year at $1.1 trillion, the fourth straight year of trillion dollar deficits on President Barack Obama's watch. . . . The bleak figures from the Congressional Budget Office, while expected, add fodder for the heated presidential campaign, in which Obama's handling of the economy and the budget is a main topic.”
CBO summarizes, “The 2012 deficit was equal to 7.0 percent of gross domestic product, CBO estimates, down from 8.7 percent in 2011, 9.0 percent in 2010, and 10.1 percent in 2009, but greater than in any other year since 1947.”
This is the second unfortunate fiscal milestone reached by the United States in the second half of this year, following the gross national debt exceeding $16 trillion a month ago.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said today, “Never before have a President and a majority party in the Senate done so little to address challenges as great as the ones our nation faces right now. Every single year the President has been in office, the nation has racked up a deficit of over $1 trillion, and now we have an unsustainable $16 trillion debt. Yet, Senate Democrats haven’t bothered to put together a budget in three years. Americans have been looking for leadership from the White House, and while the President claims to have offered a ‘balanced and comprehensive deficit reduction’ approach, his plan was so unserious that it was rejected by every single member of Congress. It’s time for leadership, time for a much different approach to get our economy growing and our nation on a sustainable path.”
Unemployment: The U.S. Department of Labor announced the September unemployment numbers. The non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) national unemployment number is 7.8%, down a bit from August. However, much of the gains were made in part-time jobs, while Americans have been unable to find full-time work. For the previous nine months, the nation’s labor force participation rate has remained below 64% as millions of Americans have stopped looking for work.
Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, remarked, "Apparently what hundreds of billions of stimulus dollars could not accomplish, a fast-approaching Election Day has accomplished. . . . Jack Welch, the legendary former chairman of General Electric and very much an establishment man. Welch tweeted, 'Unbelievable job numbers… these Chicago guys will do anything… can't debate so change the numbers.'"
Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity noted, "This mornings job numbers report is further proof that President Obama's big-government agenda is failing Americans. This has been the most sluggish economic "recovery" in recent history. More Americans are unemployed under President Obama than there have been under the past 11 presidents combined. With a 7.8% unemployment rate, only 114,000 jobs were created in September. At this rate the Great Recession job gap won't be closed until 2025.
"There are still over 12 million Americans unemployed today! With 4.8 million of those Americans having been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. For many, the American Dream is disappearing. Our economy is being stifled by the big spending and over-regulation of the Obama Administration’s policies.All around the country, American families are suffering under policies that put the brakes on economic growth and leave millions jobless. Many American families are coming to grips with a crisis at the dinner table that is rarely expressed in statistics or campaign style rhetoric. With 12.1 million Americans unemployed, it's time to try something different. Find out more at www.afpjobsagenda.org
Bill Wilson, Americans For Limited Government responded to Obama's 13 million jobs gap. "In this recession, the economy has lost a net 3.4 million jobs from its 2008 peak that have not yet been recovered. Meanwhile the working age population has grown by more than 11.1 million since then — creating a 13.5 million and widening jobs gap. . . . Since the job market’s bottom in Dec. 2009, the meager jobs growth we are currently seeing at about 150,000 a month is still not keeping up with population growth of about 200,000 a month. Therefore, it is had little effect on the unemployed rate, which had been above 8 percent for 43 straight months, the longest period of sustained high unemployment since the Great Depression. 7.8 percent is still not where we need to be.
Paul T. Conway, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor, Generation Opportunity, said :For young Americans the reality is even worse. The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds in September 2012 is 11.8% (NSA). To compound the problem, an additional 1.7 million young adults are not counted as "unemployed" by the U.S. Department of Labor, meaning they have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs. If these 1.7 million were added into the overall figure, the actual unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds would be 16.6%. The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for September 2012 is 21.0 percent (NSA); the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for September 2012 is 12.1 percent (NSA); and the youth unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for September 2012 is 11.6 percent (NSA).
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