Mitt Romney gave a surprisingly inaccurate response on Friday to President Barack Obama’s speech at Thursday’s Democratic National Convention. Stating that he was just as disappointed with the speech as he was with Barack Obama’s presidential term, Mr. Romney argued that President Obama’s speech was full of failed promises, and baselessly accused the President of overstating his promise to create jobs.
“At the last convention he said he’d cause incomes to rise; they have gone down,” Mr. Romney said about the President. “He’d create more jobs. We don’t have new jobs in America.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been a net increase of 3.8 million non farm jobs since October of 2009 when the first federal fiscal year during the Obama Administration began and when the first federal budget under his administration took effect. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also shows that there has been a net increase of 415,000 jobs since January of 2009. Private sector average hourly earnings have grown from $22.34 to $23.52 since October of 2009.
“The point is that when this president was elected, he and his team announced to the American people, by now we’d have 5.4 percent unemployment,” Mr. Romney said.
On February 4, 2012, Mr. Romney said that President Obama promised to keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. A fact check by the Washington Post revealed that Mr. Romney tried to substantiate this claim by citing a report written by two economic advisers. The report tried to gauge the “impact of a possible $775 billion stimulus package and how much of a difference it would make compared to doing nothing.”
The report wasn’t a plan that passed Congress or an official government estimate. Nor was the report a promise to maintain the unemployment rate below 8 percent.
Mr. Romney also stated that President Obama further proved in his speech that he didn’t know how to handle the economy or job growth.
“As a matter of fact, he hardly even mentioned jobs or the economy,” Mr. Romney said. “And for that matter, there is nothing that he has really done in the last three and a half, four years that gives confidence he knows what he is doing with regards to jobs and the economy anyway.”
President Obama mentioned the word jobs 15 times during his speech on Thursday.
