As a follow-up on my post from yesterday, it looks like the trend regarding Obama and our country’s unemployment problem–that is his choice to ignore it–continues. Byron York in today’s Washington Examiner has taken special note that Obama said nothing about it in yesterday’s inaugural address. As York notes:
today’s jobless rate, 7.8 percent, is precisely what it was when Obama first took the oath of office in January 2009. It’s even worse; if you combine the unemployed with those who are working part-time but want a full-time job, and those who have been too discouraged to look recently, the figure is 14.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That is a desperately bad situation. People know it. In poll after poll, Americans list jobs and the economy as the issue most important to the country. They’ve been saying the same thing every day Barack Obama has been in office.
And yet, in his inaugural address the president said essentially nothing about the nation’s most pressing problem. Why?
Because he didn’t have to. His base supporters — loyalists and activists who would declare war on a Republican president with a similar unemployment rate — continue to give Obama a pass on joblessness. There are other issues, like immigration reform, climate change and raising taxes, that excite them more than economic recovery.
What York did not point out is that there is a tension between the goal of creating employment opportunities and Obama’s actual agenda. Regardless of what one thinks about the issue of global warming, there is no question that any policy meant to curb the use of fossil fuels will make energy more expensive and therefore reduce economic growth and job creation. The same is true with any attempt to make the “rich” pay their “fair share” through higher taxes on upper income people (which will certainly trickle down to the middle class as it already has), capital gains and business. More unemployment is a cost of these programs and it is a cost that Obama has no problem with the country–not him–having to withstand.
