Obama Touts Jobs Growth, GOP Unimpressed

To President Barack Obama, today’s news that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January shows “the recovery is speeding up.”

“We’ve got to do everything in our power to keep it going,” he said.

That means Congress must quickly extend the temporary payroll tax cut for workers through the end of the year and extend long-term unemployment insurance benefits, he said.

Congress should do it “without drama, without delay, without linking it to some ideological side issue,” he said. “Now is not the time for self-inflicted wounds to our economy.”

His message to Congress: “Do not slow down the recovery we’re on. Don’t muck it up.”

The president, who visited a fire station in Arlington, Virginia, to promote new programs to get veterans back to work, also highlighted his proposal to reward manufacturers for creating jobs in the U.S. In addition, he said the U.S. needs to “double down” on clean-energy investments to reduce dependence on foreign oil and invest in education to make sure businesses have the skilled workers they need.

The better-than-expected job growth in January brought the unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent, the lowest rate in nearly three years. These numbers are based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of employers’ payrolls. A separate survey of households painted an even rosier picture. Factoring out new population adjustments by BLS, January employment based on the household survey was “up by a robust 631,000,” said Raymond Keating, chief economist for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.

That’s particularly good news because the household survey “better captures startup and small-business activity,” Keating said.

Then Keating, a conservative, added a “what if?”

“Just imagine what U.S. entrepreneurs, business, and investors could be accomplishing if policymaking was shifted in a pro-growth direction of permanent and substantive tax and regulatory relief, less government spending, an aggressive free-trade agenda, and sound monetary policy focused on price stability,” Keating said.

Republicans took a similar tack, emphasizing how much better the economy could be with the right policies. Faced with positive news about the economy, they accentuated the negative.

“These numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery,” said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“Nearly 24 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have just stopped looking for work,” he said. “Long-term unemployment remains at record levels.”

“We can do better,” Romney said.

“We could do a lot better,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia.

The way to do that, he said, is “by focusing on small businesses.”

The House plans to vote on legislation by April 15 to cut tax rates on small businesses by 20 percent, he said.

“That’s the kind of measure that will help inspire entrepreneurs and small businessmen and women to go ahead and invest and create more jobs,” Cantor said. “They need a signal from Washington that they’re not an adversary here, that we believe in the aspirational sense of America, that we believe in small-business entrepreneurs.”

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.