Wallace Presses Pence On How He Can Call The Stimulus A ‘Failure’ In The Face Of Job Growth

[cal04]

Wallace Presses Pence On How He Can Call The Stimulus A ‘Failure’ In The Face Of Job Growth

Republicans continue to rail against the stimulus, even though economists agree that the program has created a significant number of jobs. Last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said the Recovery Act has saved or created 3.6 million jobs. A recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also found that the stimulus “has increased the number of workers by between 1.2 million and 2.8 million” and projects that “3.7 million jobs could be attributed to the stimulus by the end of September.”

Today, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace presented Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) with the CBO number and asked him how he could still say that the Recovery Act has “failed” in the face of this nonpartisan evidence:

WALLACE: These are numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It estimates the stimulus has boosted growth between 1.7 and 4.2 percent, and it’s increased the number of people unemployed by 2-2.8 million. Congressman Pence, is that failure?

PENCE: Look, the reality is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that is that part of our government that tracks the economy when people are hired and fired, says that since the stimulus was passed, we’ve lost 3 million jobs overall. About 2.5 million jobs net. The reality is unemployment today over 14 million Americans are unemployed; that’s exactly what it was a year ago. The American people know. We can’t borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.

WALLACE: But what about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just in effect saying, it would have been worse, and the fact is that it has boosted growth, it has gotten millions of people employed?

PENCE: Well, our economy is beginning to grow in a tepid way on the margins, I would argue in spite of the prescriptions of the physicians in Washington, DC. The American people know what’s necessary to get this economy moving again. It’s fiscal discipline in Washington, DC, and across-the-board tax relief for working families, small businesses, and family farms.

Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/18/wallace-pence-stimulus/

Basically, Pence seems to be saying that because unemployment hasn’t been completely eradicated, the stimulus must be a failure. But it’s important to remember the hole the country had to dig itself out of from the Bush administration, and the fact that unemployment would be even higher without the stimulus:

May Jobs Report - A Step Forward, But Not Enough
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=2312

[saltpoint]

1. Mike Pence, unsettlingly, sounds like a man

running for the White House.

It would be just great to have Pence and Mitch Daniels rip each other to bits in a career-ending duel in Indiana for the GOP donor base resulting in both of them being eliminated from the 2012 nomination race.

The less of either one of them there is the better.

[Catshrink]

2. I don't know who's worse, Boehner or Pence.