With the presiidential election only two months away, there was more evidence yesterday of the terrible job the Republicans are doing with our nation's economy. The Labor Department tells us that another 84,000 jobs were lost in August. The job losses were especially tough in the construction, retail and manufacturing sectors.
That brings the total job losses for just this year to 1.75 million. The Clinton administration had created about 8 million jobs in this country, but the Bush administration seems determined to lose as many of those jobs as possible before leaving office.
Economics experts had expected the unemployment rate to climb to 5.7% last month, but it finished much worse that that. The rate now stands at a whopping 6.1%. That means at least 9.4 million Americans are now unemployed. That's an increase of 2.2 million people over just the last 12 months.
Bush doesn't think our economy is in bad shape, and I don't guess it is for him and his rich friends. The rich are still making more money than ever. But for the rest of us, this Republican-led economy is a real disaster. Wages are stagnant while prices are rising precipitously, and more jobs are disappearing every month.
And John McCain doesn't have a clue how to fix the economy. The only solutions he has come up with are to drill for more oil and cut taxes again for the rich. In other words, continue to disastrous policies of the Bush administration. Do these sound like real solutions to you?
Frankly, the American people can't afford another four years of the same old Republican policies.
It's even worse than admitted. At some point in the past the government changed the way the jobless rate is calculated. You can not compare todays reported rate with reported rates from the past. They're apple and oranges.
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