Obama's Jobs Bill Conflicted By Better Unemployment Numbers

For months, all we've ever heard out of Obama was that Congress should pass his $447 billion jobs bill "right now". Well, it appears those calls are being silenced by better unemployment numbers. On one hand you have a President who wants to get reelected by pushing a multi-billion dollar piece of legislation that would primarily benefit his unionized voting base: teachers, police, fireman, and heavy construction workers. On the other hand, Obama wants to take credit for reducing the unemployment rate and creating 1.6 million private sector jobs.

But, there's even a bigger problem for Obama. How does he explain an improving "jobs" environment when the bulk of his original stimulus ran out in the first quarter of 2011? Isn't that another reason why we shouldn't pass his new stimulus (jobs) bill?

Of course, anyone who knows how the unemployment rate is calculated also knows that the employment situation isn't really improving. Much of the lowering of the rate has been done through the shrinking of the workforce by excluding workers who have given up looking for work; and, by using "seasonal adjustments" that were primarily developed to clarify the unemployment situation during good employment and better economic times. If you actually take the raw numbers you get an entirely different picture with a rate of nearly 23% and rising (Click here to see the chart from Shadow Government Statistics - shadowstats.com).

As usual, Obama's "politicizing" of the unemployment situation has put him in a bind. And people say he's the smartest President we've ever had.