President Obama spoke Friday in the Rose Garden, surrounded by his team of economic advisors. (PHOTO CREDIT:Shawna Shepherd/CNN)
Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama went on the offensive on the politically critical issue of job creation Friday, promising to lay out a broad package of ideas next week and slamming Senate Republicans for blocking passage of his administration's small business aid legislation.
Obama renewed his call for the languishing bill in the wake of Friday's release of new unemployment figures. The jobless rate, according to the Labor Department, rose from 9.5 to 9.6 percent in August.
The economy lost a total of 54,000 jobs last month. Most of the losses, however, came from the public sector, as the government cut 114,000 temporary census workers. Private businesses added 67,000 jobs to their payrolls.
August was the eighth straight month that businesses added jobs, following nearly two straight years of job losses. So far this year businesses have added 763,000 workers to payrolls.
"That's positive news," Obama declared at the White House, flanked by his top economic advisers. It "reflects steps we've already taken to break the back of this recession."
The number of jobs added this year is about equal to the number of jobs lost the month before President Obama took office. With the repugs blocking every effort to improve the economy, that's not bad.
We could be recovering as well as Germany, for example. Even with the expense of their socialized medicine, and the government backing solar energy and high-speed rail, they are still back to the level of employment before the recent crash. As any intelligent group knows, moving forward is the only choice.
Get rid of the repugs.
Once again, hard facts vis-a-vis the economy and jobs picture paint a picture of complete and utter failure of Obama's economic policies.
Once again, Obama plays the blame game.
Once again, Obama supporters will fall in line like the good little sheep they are.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
The Grand Obstructionist Party is holding up a small business bill in the Senate. Then we have Eric Cantor talking about the White House is causing uncertainty? It's your party blocking economic growth. Such hypocrites!
If you're to dumb to see that the GOP,is hoping to mix the message,the government is getting smaller,while small business is growing I'm seeing it all over the country.As a business owner myself things are turn around.The demand for goods and service are rising.If you want proof check the volume of truck traffic on your commute.
Let me understand this. The unemployment rate went up, the country lost 54,000 jobs, the deficit continues to climb and this is considered "positive news"? Obama is as lost as a blind virgin in a strip club. Oh and you've got to love the expression on Geithner's face.
This guy has a line of b.s. a mile long,The people are so tired of the lies and deceit ,tired of blaming the gop for his failures, This economy has gotten worse since he has been in office,the deficit has grown ,the unemployment has grown,more homes have been foreclosed , more banks have closed,more business have gone bankrupt,he passed a taxpayer funded, stimulus bill that went to the unions for his reelection campaign. His socialistic agenda is what is tanking this country. the only way to get this country back to prosparity is to remove obama pelosi,biden,clinton reid,holder, and the socialist people behind the seens
Repugs will make much of the 54,000 jobs lost last month, ignoring the more important number: 67,000 private businesses jobs added. As to the public sector jobs cut, the census jobs were not counted by the repugs when they were added, so why should they be counted when they went away.
If you're to dumb to see that the GOP,is hoping to mix the message,the government is getting smaller,while small business is growing I'm seeing it all over the country.As a business owner myself things are turn around.The demand for goods and service are rising.If you want proof check the volume of truck traffic on your commute.If you sit behind a desk you'll never really know.
Thank you Mr. President.. The Party of NO has said they want you to fail and let us prove them wrong. If they keep up this type of anti American they could be the ones to fail in the end. Let us not give JOHN THE JANITOR (Boehner) a chance to furnish his new office.
Republicans and demarcates doesn’t get it .they don’t know the depth of the recession
Why the regressive obstructionists won't do anything to improve the economy right now. They have an election to win and need the economy to be in the crapper – even if they caused it and continue to block anything that might improve it!
And by god they are not gonna do anything that might make the hard-working dems appear to be helping the middle class and small businesses.
But that's OK, because Americans are smart enough to elect positive-thinking people with a plan over nay-sayers and fear mongers who don't have one. And criticize, obstruct, delay, filibuster and giving tax cuts to the filthy rich IS NOT A PLAN! It's they way those "good chrizz-gin conservative" re-theug-lie-cants do things, in or out of power....
Cry baby cry!! You ignored Republican ideas and input for 19 months and now you need them because you can not get the two Republican libs from Maine to join you.. Well too bad! We can wait another two months for Repups to crush the Dems and than we can make some sound policy that actually creates jobs rather than paying back unions and Dem supporters!!! What is two more months when you have ignored small business and job creation over the last 19 months while pushing your far left agenda...I can not wait for November!!!!!!
Again, NO ideas from the Republicans, just NO. The fact that CNN is quoting Canter and Steele is hilarious. These two idiots couldn't come up with a new idea if their lives depended on it! But, they are the first ones to criticize the Obama administration that is at least trying to do something that doesn't give more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans to have them out source more American jobs overseas and send their profits off shore.
I appreciate the hard work the president is doing to improve the lives of the american people. Some just cannot identify with the effort.
A political party that puts their win at any cost over the survival of us or our country is a party that should cease to exist.
The republicans have undying love and support for Wall St and the rich
and sacrifice the American people for their priority. The republicans have obstructed anything and everything that help to get our country out of the diasters they created because they do not want our country to improve, especially before an election.
They have spent 20 months of propaganda, lies, distortions, promoting fear with no workable, acceptable, credible ideas of their own except their politics as usual.
America, we cannot allow a party that brought our country to it's knees, is totally irresponsible and refuses to put us and our country first back in office to create additional diasters.
Stupid stupid man.
We are sick of your BS. SUre, you want to do something NOW. We have been telling you forever your going down the WRONG path.
What happened to the last stimulous money???? THought a bunch of it has been paid bacK/ Lend it..........
Socialist, crying whiner. Your game is done and your days as president are numbered.
I do however want to thank you for ONE thing. You made real Americans wake up and start paying attention to you politicians again. The bad news now is that we don't like ANY OF YOU
The only possible good news that could come out of dc would be the o-hole saying: "I had no idea, growing up in my hippy/lib utopian delusion world the way I did, that I was so out of touch with where I live or what 'American' means, that I'm resigning so someone who's actually qualified to do my job can do it." He has already proven himself unqualified, incompetent, and irrelevant. He can kiss my ass...
Please keep on fighting for the American People Mr. President. Put an end to GOP obstruction.
I think the REPUKES need to go back to whatever planet they came from....
If I could caption that photo, TurboTax Timmy would be saying "Hmmmm... I wonder if he ACTUALLY believes the junk he's peddling?"
The tempory sensus jobs is over now. Big government is wining down so the republicans and tea party folks should be jumping for joy since theyve been fighting this president for 17 month. The sector job which brings money to the economy is booming for the past 8 month. This is hard to comprehend since we were losing nearly a million jobs a month just 18 month ago. How many president in history could do that.
No one hates small business like big business, and the Republican Party is the party of big business.
Well it only took almost a trillion dollars in stimulus money and over 3 million jobs for these "too intelligent to fail" politicians (who think they are businessmen) to finally figure out that small businesses might be the key here. And they'll probabably still screw it up. OK LISTEN UP – if there is not increased DEMAND, businesses will not hire just because they get a tax break for hiring. In addition, if you give them tax breaks for other areas (R&D), they will not hire until the DEMAND increases. GET IT. And I only had two semesters of Economics over 40 years ago.
My Dear Americans:
Please, please please put your contry first instead of your party–GOP.
You may not like him for reasons beyond logiscs but Obama was democratically "elected" by majority of us. He is no David Copperfield and he can't make the huge and misarably sick elephant (left by Bush) disapear in a couple of years. There is only one president at a time, even if you didn't vote for him, he IS our one and only president–NOW. Let give him a chance.
Republicans slam the notion of Recovery Summer.
Gross Domestic Product went from MINUS 6.8% in the forth quarter of 08 (w's last full quarter) to 5% gain in the forth quarter of 09, tapering off to 1.6% recently
Job growth went from 750,000 JOBS LOST per month before President Obama took office to positive job gains, tapering off when the stimulus spending tapered off but still continuous job growth in the private sector
I guess the idiots Cantor and Steele want to return to the pre-Obama era, but not me. We are in a (slow) recovery in spite of the repugs.