As always, President Obama is doing his best to inspire Americans…by telling us unemployment will continue to rise in the coming months. This breaks sharply with the economic forecasts the Administration offered to get the stimulus bill through Congress earlier this year.
“My expectation is, is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months,” Obama said. “And the challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we are stabilizing the financial system … are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages?”
More than 2 million jobs have been lost since Congress passed Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. Without that government intervention, Obama said, states like Michigan would be in even worse shape because they would have had to lay off more teachers, firefighters and other workers.
Obama said renewed hiring tends to lag behind other signs of economic recovery. The White House has been criticized for being overly rosy in its projections of the economic rebound, particularly in terms of employment.
Time pointed out this morning that the stimulus plan has not even come close to fulfilling the Administration’s promises.
In February, top Administration officials made bold predictions for stimulus success.
Back in February, with Congress moving swiftly to approve President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, White House budget director Peter Orszag said the benefits of the stimulus would be “take weeks to months” to be felt.
Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, was even more optimistic: “You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately,” Summers told CNN in February.
We’re clearly still waiting for the stimulus to work…