During the ABC This Week Roundtable, George Will tries to argue that President Obama's job record isn't isn't an accurate reflection of joblessness due to a decline in participation, citing job losses since Bush.
March 11, 2013

During the ABC's "This Week" Roundtable Sunday, in an attempt to belittle the latest excellent job creation numbers to come out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (236,000 jobs created in February), Conservative fanboy George Will made the following incredibly clueless observation:

WILL: If the workforce participation rate were as high today as it was just 12 months ago, the unemployment rate would be 8.3 percent. If the workforce participation rate were as high today as it was when Mr. Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be over 10 percent.

Think about that statement for a moment. Will is actually arguing that job growth under Obama... growing at a rate of more than twice what is needed just to keep up with population growth, and actually produced a 0.2% decline in the Unemployment Rate last month... isn't growing fast enough to make up for the economic catastrophe created prior to President Obama taking office, and therefore is a failure. According to the Fox "business" Channel, jobless claims are actually on the decline.

And sooooo... what? We should return to the GOP economic policies that created the disaster in the first place?

For reference, by this point in Bush's presidency, the unemployment rate had gone from 4.2% the month he took office to 5.4% in March of 2005 following the longest post-war economic expansion of the 20th century and two consecutive balanced budgets under President Clinton (by contrast, unemployment has fallen under President Obama from 7.8% to 7.7% following the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and a $1.4 TRILLION dollar Deficit).

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