Let’s stop with the cut and paste unemployment numbers spin

When I joined the Bush Administration in 2008, my job was originally to serve as the Secretary of Labor’s liaison to organized labor. As a former speechwriter, it was only a matter of time before I was tapped to aid the speechwriting team and I ended up being a senior speechwriter before we turned the keys over to the Obama team at DOL.

In my time, I drafted quite a few statements on the unemployment numbers. And when I did it, I always did my best to start from scratch, not repeat the same tired old lines every month, and make sure we didn’t engage in rhetorical turd polishing – trying to reduce the impact of an increase in the unemployment rate has always been distasteful to me because those numbers aren’t just numbers. They represent some of the hardest times that can fall on someone in America. Being out of a job was one of the worst things that ever happened to me, and one of the most stressful, so I always tried to not let the number become more important than the people.

It’s too bad the folks in the Obama Administration haven’t done the same thing. In fact, numbers day for them has just turned into a cut and paste process where they repeat the same self-serving platitudes, desperately trying to downplay the fact that their policies have not done anything to get millions of Americans back to work.

The most self serving is the oft stated claim that we shouldn’t read too much into any one monthly report. While that may be true, how many monthly reports in a row does it take before the Administration at least acknowledges a trend?

Look how many times the Obama folks have said the exact same thing in the exact same way:

June 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report…”

May 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report…”

April 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report…”

March 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report…”

February 2012: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report[.]”

January 2012: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report[.]”

December 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

November 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

October 2011: “…this  is why the Administration always stresses it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

September 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

August 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

July 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

June 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

May 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

April 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

March 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

February 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

January 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

December 2010: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

November 2010: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

October 2010: “…[I]t is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

September 2010: “…[I]t is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

July 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

August 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

June 2010: “As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

May 2010: “As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

April 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

March 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

January 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

November 2009: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

Kind of reminds me of Kevin Bacon in Animal House, screaming all is well in the middle of chaos.  Just don’t read too much into the report folks! If you do, things look even worse than we’re telling you!

The funniest part about all this is that while Administration keeps telling us not to look just at one monthly report, nobody is actually doing that. That’s the point. We’re looking at the trend here, and the bottom line is that the employment numbers are under-performing where they should be at this point in a recovery, and they’re seriously under-performing where the Administration claimed they would be when they pushed through the Stimulus. We’ve had 41 straight months of unemployment over 8%. Nearly every month we’ve seen the job market under-perform expectations. So why keep repeating the same nonsense?

Another of the President’s platitudes is the line that voters shouldn’t vote Republican because we’ll just restore the policies that got us into this mess in the first place. Despite that not being true, what’s his alternative? Policies that keep us stagnating? That have not lowered unemployment? That have piled up even more debt with little to show for it?

At the end of the day, the Obama Administration is going to have a hard time selling the idea that their policies have solved the economic crisis. So that’s why they keep repeating themselves. Maybe if they keep saying things are getting better, over and over and over again, somebody may start to believe it.

They’d better hope so, or they’re all going to be in those unemployment numbers next January.

Сейчас уже никто не берёт классический кредит, приходя в отделение банка. Это уже в далёком прошлом. Одним из главных достижений прогресса является возможность получать кредиты онлайн, что очень удобно и практично, а также выгодно кредиторам, так как теперь они могут ссудить деньги даже тем, у кого рядом нет филиала их организации, но есть интернет. http://credit-n.ru/zaymyi.html - это один из сайтов, где заёмщики могут заполнить заявку на получение кредита или микрозайма онлайн. Посетите его и оцените удобство взаимодействия с банками и мфо через сеть.