Posted on 05/23/2012 4:11:33 PM PDT by Libloather
Romney vows to lower jobless rate in first term to 6 percent
By Jonathan Easley - 05/23/12 02:01 PM ET
Mitt Romney says his administration would lower the unemployment rate to 6 percent by the end of his first term.
“I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we’d put in place, we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, and perhaps a little lower,” Romney says in a Time magazine interview.
The 6 percent prediction is a bold claim that Romney will surely be held to by Democrats if he’s elected.
When Obama took office in January 2009, unemployment stood at 7.8 percent and rose throughout the year, peaking at 10 percent in October. It’s been slowly declining since, hitting 8.1 percent in April, although job growth has slowed in recent months.
“This is a President who spends his time blaming other people for the fact that he has been unsuccessful in turning around this economy,” Romney says in the Time interview. “And I think the reason you’re seeing across the country, people saying they’d like to try someone new, is because they believe this President, while he may be a nice guy, is simply not up to the task of helping guide an economy.”
Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt pushed back immediately.
"Romney moved the goalposts in just a matter of weeks,” LaBolt said in a conference call with reporters. “He said 4 percent a couple weeks ago."
In May, Romney said “anything under 4 percent [unemployment] is nothing to celebrate.”
LaBolt questioned how Romney intended to “get to 6 percent without supporting some of the president’s programs” and said "government economists have been clear” that under their projections the jobless rate was already expected to fall below that figure.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the unemployment rate will drop to 5.3 percent by the end of 2016.
In his Time interview, Romney also said that if elected, he hopes lawmakers won’t enact major fiscal reforms during the lame-duck session, despite what many believe to be a looming crisis in 2013 if Congress fails to enact budget and tax reform.
“My preference would be to have the opportunity to do that after the election as opposed to have the President in a lame-duck session try and create a solution that may not be in keeping with the new administration,” Romney says.
Speaking before The Latino Coalition in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Romney continued to hammer the president over what he says are policies that are unfriendly to business.
“Sadly, President Obama has decided to attack success,” Romney said. “It’s no wonder so many of his own supporters are calling on him to stop this war on job creators. Make no mistake, when I am president, you won’t wake up every day and wonder if the president is on your side. In recent days we’ve heard a lot about business from the president, and if you’re feeling like you deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act, I can’t blame you.”
Polls show voters rank the economy as the most important issue in the upcoming elections.
Some Republicans allege current unemployment figures break a prediction by the White House that the jobless rate wouldn’t top 8 percent after the passage of stimulus measures early in his administration. Fact-checking group Politifact, however, says that claim is mostly false, and stems from a report by two economic advisers that was couched in uncertainty, and not from Obama.
In recent days, the Obama campaign has hit back at Romney's claims that he can turn around the economy by focusing on his career at Bain Capital, saying that a career spent maximizing profits for a private-equity firm doesn’t give him the experience he needs to create jobs to boost the nation's economy.
A very difficult promise to keep since as soon as the economy improves, everyone who’s given up looking for work would start looking again, and then raise the rate to 10%.
Lowering it the Obama way is much easier.
Shut down or even gut control/regulation by the EPA/Interior/Energy Depts and unemployment all but evaporates. Reel in OSHA and the Dept of labor and it will evaporate, but for those unwilling to work.
The added side effect of an exploding (in a good way) economy will guarantee no Dems in power until Americans get fat and lazy again...then the process will repeat.
1. When has any CBO projection ever been close to correct
2. Obama's Labor Department figuring will have it down to that level by October 2012.
No, we don't want a statistically determined UNEMPLOYMENT RATE that looks just 25% better. We want a dramatically improved employment rate where 47% of our recent college graduates are NOT working in part time work ~ and the other 53% with no job at all also have jobs.
I've been telling you, Romney has NOTHING to offer anyone ~ just ME~TO~ISM to the OBAMA disaster.
It's a shame that the GOP-e thinks this sort of nonsense will attract the 75% of the party that's Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Libertarian or TEA Party to vote for their candidate.
4.2% where I live in 2009..
With that, might happen.
as opposed to renouncing Soviet style central economic planning in favor of policies that are morally and economically the best without predicting what free people and free markets will do in response - other than ‘surely perform better’
so like Obama - and his predecessors since FDR - a U.S. president is responsible for being the nation’s economic savior
how about a simple Reaganesque promise to “get the Federal government off of the back of the private economy, so that it can perform better on its own” - and time will tell us the stats of doing that; we don’t need a President who thinks he can predict them.
It sounds like Romney could get a budget through where Obama could not. I don’t see any particular voodoo economic aspect to his proposals — you’re more welcome to point out how they are indistinguishable from Obama’s if they are. He’s been a businessman and investor. He ought to know what generates jobs if anybody does.
Even if Rombama were the same — why allow any one more than four years in which to dig in?
Six months? Maybe.
If Romney and congress:
1) Flat tax or Fair Tax
2) cut 33% spending ASAP
3) deregulate the energy
...our economy will BOOM.
But I don’t expect the above 3 to happen.
Some better explanations of why he believes these figures might be in order — it is a fair question. But even on its face it is not utterly incredible. I take it as looking back to the best of GWB’s days, by taking away the Obamaesque burdens and threats which make business shy to hire.
Even simply refraining from monkeying with Bush-era revisions to the tax code, would be of some help. Any transition to flat or “fair” tax would need several years to avoid throwing those who depended on the old code’s loopholes utterly into the lurch. It couldn’t happen that quick.
I don't know if 6% would be reachable in the first term. The past few decades we have used bubbles to hide the flaws in the economy. It will take a generation to have a healthy economy again.
Let’s get a REAL candidate out there. This guy isn’t even a decent bean counter.
I want to hear specifics about how he’ll crank up manufacturing in the USA. I want to hear how he’s going to spur small business and self employment. I want to know how he’s going to free up jobs held by those who aren’t even legal to work in this country.
Talk about lowering taxes on the rich is nice and they deserve it but they just invest it overseas and will continue to do so as long as its so expensive to manufacture here. I want to know what he’s going to do that will ease life for those who are just scraping by.
I want to know what he will do about the marxist indoctrination centers known as public schools. I want to know what he’ll do about the EPA, I want to know what he will do about OSHA, I want to know what he’ll do about the department of education and department of energy.
Counted them well enough to take a quarter of a billion worth of beans home. That has to mean something vis a vis Obama’s utter resume blank (even now, all Obama can brag of is sending the larger economy reeling).
I would make a terrible president. But, give me a relatively conservative (or compliant) congress and I could do it.
Most Freepers could. It just takes common sense.
So primaries don’t count anymore?
Gotta' be more here, and he hasn't got the ability to connect to ordinary human beings.
We need a real candidate. Even the GOP-e crowd have to feel this.
How about just 1.
There, I've said it. You cheat in just 1 primary YOU ARE OUTTA THERE, or should be.
I have little tolerance for vote fraud and election rigging. You may be different of course.
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