What’s Romney hiding in his record?
In
his speech on April 24 kicking off his general-election campaign,
Romney began, sensibly enough, by promising to tell us a little bit
about himself. He bragged about his picture-perfect family. He spoke
with pride of how his father had lifted himself from struggling salesman
to CEO and governor. Then he recounted his time as a businessman,
helping build companies like Staples and Bright Horizons. Finally, he
launched into how Barack Obama couldn’t organize a one-car parade and
how he (Romney) would make a much better president.
Wait
a minute, Mitt. You missed something. Family: check. Wealth: got it.
Gonna be a keen president: right. Wasn’t there something else on the
résumé? Oh, yeah: Mitt Romney served as governor of Massachusetts.
It’s
weird. Most governors who seek the presidency can’t shut up about how
great their states are. Right now, there’s an even-money chance that
Bill Clinton is telling someone that Hope, Ark., produces the biggest,
juiciest watermelons in the world. But not Mitt. In the most important
speech of his presidential campaign thus far, he ignored the only time
he has ever held public office.
That
is a mistake. Romney should be defining his record in Massachusetts
before his opponents can define it for him. Two days before Romney’s
kickoff speech, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Obama
strategist David Axelrod began carpet-bombing the Massachusetts record,
noting that Romney is touting his business acumen, but also that he did
the same when he ran for governor. “He said, ‘I’m going to get the
economy moving again. I’m a businessman. I know how to create jobs.’
[The state] went from 37th in the nation in job creation to 47th in the
nation in job creation. So we’ve tested the Romney acumen when it comes
to creating jobs, and he’s been found wanting.”
Perhaps
that’s why Romney doesn’t dwell on his record as governor. His state
really was 47th in job creation, behind only Ohio and Michigan, both of
which were being ravaged in the manufacturing meltdown, and Louisiana,
which had been devastated by Katrina. Romney even trailed Mississippi
and Alabama in job growth, breaking the iron law that Mississippi and
Alabama have to be last in pretty much everything except cockfights and
kissin’ cousins. While the country as a whole enjoyed 5 percent growth,
Romney’s Massachusetts grew at 0.9 percent.
It
wasn’t supposed to be that way. Romney sold himself to the voters as a
turnaround artist—a CEO who could lure jobs to the Bay State. He pledged
to use his business skills to “encourage businesses to come grow and
thrive in the most robust portion of the economy, Massachusetts.” Not so
much.
Romney’s
economic failure in Massachusetts is especially problematic because the
central premise of his presidential campaign is the same as it was when
he ran for governor: that he can apply his business skills to our
economic problems. Massachusetts was the guinea pig for Romney
economics. The results weren’t pretty. In addition to almost zero job
growth, the state saw a modest decline in real median income, meaning
that the folks who had jobs were bringing home less.
Romney
did close the $3 billion budget gap he’d inherited (although he then
left a projected shortfall of up to $1 billion). The methods he used are
instructive. He slashed higher education, cut revenue to local
governments, and raised fees on everything from college students to
mortgages, from buying a boat to opening a bar.
Romney’s
cuts to education and job training were especially severe. Fees for
university students shot up 63 percent as Romney hammered college
funding. Robert Karam, former chair of the UMass Board of Trustees, was a
Romney backer. But no more. “I think higher education really stood
still” under Romney, he has said. Romney even annoyed the business
community—his core constituency—by cutting job training, workforce
development, and trade assistance.
The
Romney recipe of cutting education and job training, forcing higher
fees on the middle class, and protecting the rich from tax hikes didn’t
work in Massachusetts. But his approach to health care did.
Paradoxically, the best thing Romney did as governor—and it was a great
thing—is the one thing he dares not talk about as a presidential
candidate. Too bad, because a solid 62 percent of the folks who actually
live under Romneycare—and its dreaded individual mandate—say they like
it.
The
Romney record in Massachusetts suggests that Romney’s campaign has it
backward: instead of talking up jobs and running away from health care,
Mitt ought to be bragging about Romneycare and avoiding scrutiny of the
one time his economic theories were actually put to the test.
Paul Begala is a Newsweek/Daily Beast columnist, a CNN contributor, an affiliated professor of public policy at Georgetown, and a senior adviser to Priorities USA Action, a progressive PAC.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/29/paul-begala-what-s-mitt-romney-hiding-in-his-record-as-governor.html
Economy added 115,000 jobs in April; unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent
By Peter Whoriskey
The unemployment rate dropped a notch to 8.1 percent in April, the Labor Department reported on Friday, but the pace of job growth has fallen off, amid other signs that the economic recovery may be losing momentum.The economy added 115,000 payroll jobs last month, a meager showing compared with earlier this year when the jobs tally was rising at twice that rate and sowing optimism about the nation’s economic prospects.
Some of the most quoted figures from the jobs report suggested good news. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent the month before, and the number of unemployed people declined to 12.5 million from 12.7 million.
But at least part of the reason for the decline in the ranks of unemployed is that many people decided to stop looking for a job. People who have stopped looking for work are no longer counted as unemployed.
The labor force, defined as the number of people working or seeking work, declined by 342,000 in April, Labor Department said.
“The decline in the unemployment rate is principally because a lot of people gave up looking for a job in April,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics. “The economy has created so few jobs that people are disillusioned with trying to find a job and they’ve just given up.”
The number of long-term unemployed, those who’ve been out of work for 27 weeks or more, was little changed at 5.1 million in April. That group makes up more than 40 percent of the jobless rolls.
The unemployment numbers, which may be the most closely watched economics barometer to come to bear in the presidential election, were seized upon by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who called Friday’s report “terrible and very disappointing.”
Romney suggested that job growth in a recovery should be closer to 500,000 jobs a month.
“This is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery,” Romney said on Fox News. “It’s a terrible and very disappointing report this morning.... We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. This is not progress.”
Yet an economy that is consistently adding 500,000 jobs a month has rarely been achieved in U.S. history, according to Labor Department figures. Over the last 20 years, there have been only two months - once in 1997 and 2010 - when the economy added nonfarm payroll jobs at that rate.
Over the last 20 years, the average annual monthly growth in those payroll jobs has been about 200,000.
“Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but much more remains to be done to repair the damage caused by the financial crisis and the deep recession,” Alan B. Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
Stock prices dropped with the news of the jobs report. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 56.91 points, or 0.43 percent.
While the month of April falls well short of the trend that economists would like to see, Krueger and other analysts suggested that taking a broader view, the recovery seems healthy.
Over the last four months, the number of nonfarm payroll jobs has climbed 200,000 a month on average.
Economists attributed at least part of the recent fall-off in April to the good weather in January and February: Employers hired people then, boosting the numbers for January and February but depleting them in March and April, which have show relatively weak reports.
The 200,000 average monthly job gains “is actually not a bad jobs number,” Ashworth said. “There’s no reason to think the economy just fell of the rails.”
In April, employment rose in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care. Transportation and warehousing lost jobs over the month.
Staff Writers Philip Rucker, Amy Gardner and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/economy-adds-115000-jobs-in-april-unemployment-rate-drops-to-81-percent/2012/05/04/gIQAjdq70T_story.html?hpid=z1
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