Boehner ‘encouraged’ by jobs report, but ‘no cause for celebration’

Top-ranking House GOP Rep. John Boehner (Ohio) is “encouraged” by the
dropping unemployment numbers released Friday morning but calls them “no
cause for celebration.”

Though the minority leader conceded the economy improved “slightly,” he said it fell well short of the White House’s promises in January that the nearly trillion-dollar economic stimulus bill would prevent the jobless rate from dipping below 8 percent.

{mosads}House GOP lawmakers focused their attacks this week on blaming Democrats for enacting “job-killing policies” that resulted in a 10.2 percent unemployment rate.

On Friday morning that number improved slightly, dropping to 10 percent, according to a report issued by Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Boehner took little consolation in that number and continued to beat the war drums in opposition to jobs-related proposals being considered by Congress.

“Anyone who views today’s report as a cause for celebration really is out of touch with the American people,” he said, explaining that employers were not hiring due to the uncertainty created by Democratic economic initiatives.

“Their government takeover of healthcare, their national energy tax, their card-check bill would create even more debt and will kill even more jobs in America,” Boehner said less than one day after he held a dueling “jobs summit” with the White House.

Democrats, however, blame the economic situation on the previous Republican administration and former GOP-run Congress, accusing them of capitalizing politically on a problem created when they were in power.

“It’s long past time for Representative Boehner and other Republicans who want to return to the Bush policies responsible for creating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression to stop rooting against the economy for selfish political gain,” House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spokesman Ryan Rudominer said.

Boehner acknowledged the positive jobless number but said that it was due in no part to Democratic policies – specifically the $787 billion economic recovery measure signed by the president in mid-February.

“While we are encouraged that the rate dropped slightly, I don’t think that it had anything to do with the stimulus bill at all,” Boehner said.

Not one House Republican supported that bill.

Democrats were quick to call out Boehner’s conviction that the stimulus in particular had not created jobs.

One Democratic leadership aide had to “call B.S. on this one,” telling The Hill that Republicans have “zero credibility” on economic policy matters, especially on the stimulus.

“First there was the CBO report on the recovery package, [House Minority Whip] Eric Cantor’s [R-Va.] ‘My Little Pony’ jobs plan, Boehner holding an economic roundtable with Bush officials who left our economy in shambles and now today’s jobs report,” the aide said.

Democrats seized on a report by the Congressional Budget Office released earlier in the week that cited an estimated 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs resulting from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

But the minority leader’s office disputes the validity of those results, saying they were based on “faulty” data on the White House-run Recovery.gov website.

The CBO noted that its findings were based on estimates included on that website that showed money being spent on projects in dozens of non-existent House districts.

That dispute aside, Democrats still believe that had it not been for the stimulus bill the economic picture would be even worse.

At Boehner’s economic forum Thursday seven conservative economists – former advisers to national GOP leaders including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former President George W. Bush – added fuel to the Republicans’ contention that Obama’s signature economic policies including the stimulus bill, healthcare legislation and the climate-change initiative are “job-killing” measures.