KUHNHENN: 10% jobless rate is Obama’s troubling world

For months he had warned it was coming, but that didn’t ease the political shockwaves for President Obama when unemployment topped 10 percent.

A year after his election, Mr. Obama finds it increasingly difficult to blame the sour economy on George W. Bush or offer reassurances that jobless Americans will soon find work.

Never mind that the economy itself grew in the last quarter, that the recession, as measured by the precise formulas used by economists, is over and that the number of jobs lost in October was less than one-third the number of job losses at the start of his presidency.

Those claims about the recession’s end do not convince people who remain painfully aware of the unemployment rate.

At 10.2 percent, October unemployment climbed to chart-topping heights unseen in more than a quarter-century. The bottom line is that more than 15 million Americans are out of work, and 3.5 million lost their jobs while Mr. Obama was president. Expected or not, this is Mr. Obama’s new reality.

“I won’t let up until the Americans who want to find work can find work, and until all Americans can earn enough to raise their families and keep their businesses open,” the president declared Friday.

That’s a hopeful promise, but not very realistic.

And it shows that, for the time being, action to tackle record budget deficits will simply have to wait.

Mr. Obama, appearing at the White House Rose Garden on Friday three hours after the jobless numbers were made public, said his administration was looking at additional spending for roads and bridges and energy efficient buildings. Additional tax cuts for businesses and steps to increase credit for small businesses were also on the bill.

The new unemployment rate came on the same day Mr. Obama signed a $24 billion bill to extend jobless benefits and spur homebuying.

In a sign of Democratic thinking, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Democrat, who heads Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, said Democrats would consider new aid to states, an “infrastructure bank” to increase construction jobs, and small-business tax credits.

“I think we’re witnessing a political renaissance about concerns about jobs,” Lawrence Mishel, president of the labor-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said approvingly. “It will put the deficit concerns into their appropriate context.”

What all this amounts to is another stimulus for the economy. Though don’t look for Democrats to call it that; Democrats have a tough enough time debating the merits of the $787 billion stimulus Congress passed earlier this year.

Republicans were quick to pounce on the proposals. Internal polling by the Republican National Committee after Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia showed that Republican candidates could do well by arguing against additional spending while promoting job growth through tax cutting alone.

But in rhetoric and in deed, Mr. Obama is being forced to address an unemployment picture his economic team had long ago expected to avoid.

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