Another Fine Out of Context attack by the GOP faux outrage echo chamber. Mitt must think his supporters are the most ignorant sort of people......
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/jun/08/context-private-sector-doing-fine/
Here are excerpts of Obama's remarks:
"Keep in mind that the private sector has been hiring at a solid pace over the last 27 months. But one of the biggest weaknesses has been state and local governments, which have laid off 450,000 Americans. These are teachers and cops and firefighters. Congress should pass a bill putting them back to work right now, giving help to the states so that those layoffs are not occurring.
"In addition, since the housing bubble burst, we've got more than a million construction workers out of work. There's nothing fiscally responsible about waiting to fix your roof until it caves in. We've got a lot of deferred maintenance in this country. We could be putting a lot of people back to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, some of ours schools.
"There's work to be done. There are workers to do it. Let's put them back to work right now. The housing market is stabilizing and beginning to come back in many parts of the country, but there are still millions of responsible homeowners who've done everything right, but still struggle to make ends meet. So, as I talked about just a few weeks ago, let's pass a bill that gives them a chance to save an average of $3,000 a year by refinancing their mortgage and taking advantage of these historically low rates. That's something we can do right now that would make a difference.
"Instead of just talking a good game about job creators, Congress should give the small-business owners that actually create most of the new jobs in America a tax break for hiring more workers.
"These are ideas that, again, have gotten strong validation from independent, nonpartisan economists. It would make a difference in our economy. And there's no excuse for not passing these ideas. We know they can work."
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"We've got a couple of sectors in our economy that are still weak. Overall, the private sector has been doing a good job creating jobs. We've seen record profits in the corporate sector. The big challenge we have in our economy right now is state and local government hiring has been going in the wrong direction. You've seen teacher layoffs, police officers, cops, firefighters are being laid off. And the other sector that is still weak has been the construction industry.
"Those two areas, we've directly addressed with our jobs plan. The problem is that it requires Congress to take action, and we're going to keep pushing them to see if they can move in that direction.
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Question: "What about the Republicans saying that you're blaming the Europeans for the failure of your own policies?"
"The truth of the matter is that, as I said we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last two -- 27 months; over 800,000 just this year alone.
The private sector is doing fine.
"Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government, oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.
"And so, you know, if -- if Republicans want to be helpful, if they really want to move forward and put people back to work, what they should be thinking about is how do we help state and local governments and how do we help the construction industry.
"Because the recipes that they're promoting are basically the kinds of policies that would add weakness to -- to the economy, would result in further layoffs, would not provide relief in the housing market, and would result, I think most economists estimate, in lower growth and fewer jobs, not more."
