The Friday before Labor Day the jobs picture in the country continues to be grim: today’s unemployment report shows absolutely zero job growth, with the unemployment rate staying the same as July at 9.1 percent. This is hardly surprising, given the recent budget updates by both the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Management and Budget.
 
CBO’s August update to its Budget and Economic outlook painted a dismal picture for the United States economy:  it requires optimistic economic growth of 2.3 percent just to get unemployment to 8.5 percent by the last quarter of 2012.  The economy would have to gain approximately 135,000 jobs each month until the election just to get unemployment to where "stimulus" was supposed to keep it - 7.9 percent.

By the White House’s own admission in its Mid-Session Review released yesterday, the promised jobs surge under the “stimulus” program will not materialize; the unemployment rate will stay above 9 percent for the rest of the year.

If the stagnant employment numbers didn’t edify the folly of the President’s “stimulus” plan, this week the Mercatus Center released a comprehensive study further proving the shortcomings of the Obama jobs agenda. The study, entitled No Such Thing as Shovel Ready, discusses how the trillion dollar debt and spending package amounted to nothing more than a federal slush fund for White House prerogatives.

Still, the President dithers. Running away from the poor economic forecast to vacation for the weekend at Camp David, the President still refuses to offer tangible plans for job creation. The President, who plans to give a speech on his purported vision for economic recovery next week, needs to move beyond platitudes and commit an actual proposal to paper. Without an actual plan, the only tangible proof of the Obama Jobs Agenda for taxpayers is the abysmal unemployment rate.

Posted by Mattie Duppler on Friday, September 2, 2011 9:57 AM EDT

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