Rmoney: "He said that by now we'd have unemployment at 5.4%." WTF?

[AtomicKitten]

WTF? Did anybody else hear this last night? I haven't read anything about anywhere from anybody, so I checked the transcript to be sure. Yep. He said O said it would be 5.4 percent.

Wasn't the magic number 8 percent? Rmoney hammered that number over and over. Now that unemployment is below 8 percent, it appears Rmoney has changed the magic number.

link: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/16/transcript-second-presidential-debate/comment-page-8/

Excerpt:

He said that by now we'd have unemployment at 5.4 percent. The
difference between where it is and 5.4 percent is 9 million Americans
without work.

I wasn't the one that said 5.4 percent. This was the president's
plan. Didn't get there.

[liberal N proud]

1. He used the 5.4% figure in the first debate

but there is no context as to when he said that.

Again, the republicans fail to mention the mess their little boy George boiled over in September of that year.

[AtomicKitten]

2. I don't recall ever hearing that figure before.

I was astounded to hear it in the second debate,
partially because Rmoney was hammering the 8% for so long.

I thought he just changed it because unemployment had dropped below 8%.

I wonder where he got the 5.4% figure?

[liberal N proud]

3. Same place he got the $25,000 deductions.

His ass?

[Avalux]

4. "I'll just pick a number" as he waves his hand in the air.

Exactly. His ass.

[AtomicKitten]

5. LOL. Yes, that does appear to be the place from where it emanated.

[LiberalElite]

11. off topic -

I love that popcorn eating cat!

[AtomicKitten]

18. thanks

and welcome to DU

[yellowcanine]

15. That $25,000 deduction was $17,000 when he first proposed it.

But it caught so much flak Mitt quietly started using the $25, 000 figure, all the while acting real casual like the actual number is not important.

[Cha]

20. Outta his ass. That same ass that PBO

handed him last night.

[AtomicKitten]

25. I thought it smelled funny.

[Firebirds01]

6. Its a made up number

Like george lucas choosing "order 66" for revenge of the sith. Just made up cause it sounds good.

Basically they said 'SHIT Obama got unemployment under 8%....quick make something up." So they chose 5.4 because it sounds random enough that it must be true...right?


If I were a republican I would hop I would be insulted by the constant and overbearing lies that the party candidates tell. But here is the thing, regular republicans are ok with lies because they think that lies must be told to win and defeat the 'liberal bias media.' that is the beauty behind it....lying is alright because its a 'necessary evile' to counter the spin. republicans are so oppressed and need to lie, ya know.


fuck off Mitt.

[Cosmocat]

7. it is such a hailstorm of bullshit

you can't even keep up with this guy.

literally.

[exboyfil]

8. Where the number came from

http://live.boston.com/Event/Live_blog_Second_debate_between_President_Obama_and_Mitt_Romney/52176772

FACT CHECK: Obama promised a 5.4 percent unemployment rate by now: Romney's claim is based on a report Obama's Council of Economic Advisers prepared before Obama took office. The council predicted that passage of Obama’s stimulus package would prevent unemployment from rising above 8 percent -- a fact Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney cites frequently -- and would bring it down to the mid-5s in the third quarter of 2012.

[AtomicKitten]

9. So 2 economists before joining the O admin predicated this before he was sworn in.

Thanks for the heads-up on this. This is waaaaaaaay before they realized how bad the recession was. It looks pretty anorexic to me. Romney is really, really reaching on this one.

5.4% unemployment

Claim: Romney said Obama said unemployment would be 5.4% by now.

Facts: Two economists who would soon join the Obama administration issued a report in early January 2009 – before Obama's inauguration – predicting that an economic stimulus plan would prevent unemployment from rising above 8% and would push it down to about 5.4% by the third quarter of 2012. However, the economists underestimated the severity of the recession. Even without the stimulus, they forecast in that report that the jobless rate would be 5.9% by now.

Last year, the Commerce Department said the slump was far worse than it had estimated, with the economy contracting almost 9% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 5.3% in the first quarter of 2009.

[exboyfil]

10. I looked at Worldbank inflation adjusted

GDP growth rates.

Recession of 1980 -0.3%
Recession of 1982 -2.0%
Recession of 1991 -0.3%
Recession of 2009 -3.5%

The amazing thing is that we climbed out of the hole so fast. We were in a glidepath for destruction. We had a quarter of -8.9% which you mentioned.

[Cha]

21. Well if the gop hadn't met the night Obama was Inaugurated and

Vowed he would be a one term president and the gop house hadn't done everything in its power to make it so then maybe we would be that low.

Ryan was part of that gang that met the night of January 21, 2008.

[exboyfil]

22. Probably should bring it up at debate

if Romney brings it up again. Romney could respond that his "bipartisanship" approach we make sure that this does not happen (which is garbage.).

[Cha]

27. Yes, it's freaking swill..he didn't do it in Mass and

he's a filthy liar.

[ProSense]

12. Mitt is an idiot. First of all,

the projection was based on a high rate of nearly 8 percent, projecting that the figure would drop to below 6 percent by this time.

Secondly, the rate climbed to about 10 percent in mid 2009. It's down to 7.8 percent.

What Mittwit isn't going to mention is the despicable idiots in his party who, along with him, have been rooting for failure and sabotaging the recovery effort.

The Jobs Program That Wasn’t

Macroeconomic Advisers on the American Jobs Act, proposed a year ago:

We estimate that the American Jobs Act (AJA), if enacted, would give a significant boost to GDP and employment over the near-term.

-The various tax cuts aimed at raising workers’ after-tax income and encouraging hiring and investing, combined with the spending increases aimed at maintaining state & local employment and funding infrastructure modernization, would:
-Boost the level of GDP by 1.3% by the end of 2012, and by 0.2% by the end of 2013.
-Raise nonfarm establishment employment by 1.3 million by the end of 2012 and 0.8 million by the end of 2013, relative to the baseline

Of course, it that had happened, Obama would be more or less a lock for reelection. Instead, having blocked the president’s economic plans, Republicans can point to weak job growth and claim that the president’s policies have failed.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/the-jobs-program-that-wasnt/

In September 2011, Republicans blocked the American Jobs Act and up to 2 million jobs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021294027

Obstruct and Exploit

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Does anyone remember the American Jobs Act? A year ago President Obama proposed boosting the economy with a combination of tax cuts and spending increases, aimed in particular at sustaining state and local government employment. Independent analysts reacted favorably. For example, the consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers estimated that the act would add 1.3 million jobs by the end of 2012.

There were good reasons for these positive assessments. Although you’d never know it from political debate, worldwide experience since the financial crisis struck in 2008 has overwhelmingly confirmed the proposition that fiscal policy “works,” that temporary increases in spending boost employment in a depressed economy (and that spending cuts increase unemployment). The Jobs Act would have been just what the doctor ordered.

But the bill went nowhere, of course, blocked by Republicans in Congress. And now, having prevented Mr. Obama from implementing any of his policies, those same Republicans are pointing to disappointing job numbers and declaring that the president’s policies have failed.

Think of it as a two-part strategy. First, obstruct any and all efforts to strengthen the economy, then exploit the economy’s weakness for political gain. If this strategy sounds cynical, that’s because it is. Yet it’s the G.O.P.’s best chance for victory in November.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/opinion/krugman-obstruct-and-exploit.html

And once you take the effects of public spending on private employment into account, a rough estimate is that the unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower than it is, or below 7 percent — significantly better than the Reagan economy at this stage.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/opinion/krugman-states-of-depression.html

[AtomicKitten]

17. Thanks for the background on this.

Rmoney abandoned the 8% claim and embraced the 5.4% claim to punctuate his bullshit, and this kind of bait and switch crap is starting to get noticed. Jon Huntsman was right when he called him a well-lubricated weather vane.

[former9thward]

13. The incomming Obama team issued a report in Jan. 2009 projecting a 5.5% rate by the end of 2012

This was in support of the stimulus bill.
http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/The_Job_Impact_of_the_American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Plan.pdf

On Jan. 10, 2009 Obama gave a radio address in support of the report. I asked my nominee for Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Christina Romer, and the Vice President-Elect's Chief Economic Adviser, Dr. Jared Bernstein, to conduct a rigorous analysis of this plan and come up with projections of how many jobs it will create – and what kind of jobs they will be. Today, I am releasing a report of their findings so that the American people can see exactly what this plan will mean for their families, their communities, and our economy.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=85391&st=jobs&st1=#axzz1OPNVsvHl

The 5.8% figure is accurate. It was a projection which did not work out.

[AtomicKitten]

16. Roemer was the one who said it would be under 8%.

A prediction, again, made before O was even inaugurated.

[former9thward]

23. Which if you read read my post Obama endorsed.

Not every prediction comes true this was one of them.

[AtomicKitten]

24. How do you endorse a guess?

I don't mean to be obtuse. Maybe I'm just not getting it but it seems to me both the 8% and 5.4% predictions were made before they had ascertained exactly how deep the recession was. I don't understand how anyone could hold Obama responsible and take him to task for something no more reliable than an astrological forecast.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

14. Romney would send ground troops to war - DRAFT

[NCLefty]

19. You didn't think he was going to keep the same number after we beat it, did you?

[Tom Rinaldo]

26. Here is the comeback to that line of attack

Our recovery is slower than the President initially forcast, but it turns out that the recession itself was far worse than how experts were characterizing it when Obama actually made his recovery projections. That fact was revealed in revised figures documenting the actual GDP loss during the recession that were retroactively released by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis:

“The overall pattern of quarterly changes during the downturn was similar in both the revised and previously published estimates, though the revised estimates show larger decreases for 2008:Q4 (-8.9 percent compared with -6.8 percent) and for 2009:Q1 (-6.7 percent compared with -4.9 percent).”
http://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=1004

And why was the economy so god damned awful in the first place when Obama took office? Because of the failed economic policies of the last Republican Administration.