Today’s jobs report brought plenty of good news: The economy added 195,000 jobs in June; unemployment held steady at 7.6 percent, which means that more people are encouraged enough to re-enter the job-hunting market.
On top of that, the federal budget deficit has been cut roughly in half, to around $600 billion for the current fiscal year. That’s still too high, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it was a year ago, let alone when President Obama took office in January 2009 while facing the worst worldwide financial meltdown since the Great Depression.
I keep waiting for Obama’s foes to give him some credit, at least a little, for helping end the free fall. I put my ear to the ground and I hear … nothing. Not a sound.
Instead, I hear the same old gripes — sprinkled with some outright lies — about Barack Obama’s motives, his intentions and even his loyalty.
Many folks I know in this part of the world — this heavily Republican stronghold — just cannot bring themselves to offer a good word about his economic policy. They say the stimulus did no good, even though federal stimulus money helped states such as Texas balance their budgets; they gripe about that stimulus money, all the while watching silently as cities and counties throughout our region accepted it.
I’ll concede that the job growth has been tepid. I keep wondering, though, what would have happened had the Obama administration failed to take action when it did. No one, not even the president’s harshest critics, seem able to answer that key question. Would the private sector have righted itself? Would jobs begin developing out of thin air? Would the deficit have been reduced as dramatically as it has done in the past year and a half?
Where I stand, I’ll take slow-and-steady growth as a sign of an economy that’s rebuilding itself from its foundation.