Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Obama 'Unable to Get A Firm Grip' on Economy

President Barack Obama just doesn't get that his lack of leadership has shaped our stalled economy, says U.S. News and World Report editor Mort Zuckerman.
"Mr. Obama seems unable to get a firm grip on the toughest issue facing his presidency and the country—the economy," Zuckerman writes in The Wall Street Journal.
"He now asserts he is going to "pivot" to jobs. Now we pivot to jobs? When there are already 25 million Americans who are either unemployed or cannot find full-time work?"
"Does this president not appreciate what is going on?"
Fewer Americans are working full-time today than when Mr. Obama took office, Zuckerman notes, more than 900,000 full-time jobs were lost in the last four months alone, and long-term unemployment is at a post-World War II high.
Since the president is the one who represents all of America and all Americans, says Zuckerman, the buck stops with him rather than with the Congress.
"It is the president's job to offer a coherent program for the twin threats of a static economy and an unsustainable explosion of our debts and deficits," Zuckerman notes. "But the only core issue on which he took a clear position in the recent debt-ceiling negotiations was that it would have to include new taxes on the wealthy—and he didn't even hold to that."
In its recently issued semiannual report, the Congressional Budget Office projected that unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014.

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