Your Daily Dose of Spin

The February employment report shows a net increase of 227,000 payroll jobs.  Combined with continued sub-400k weeks for initial unemployment insurance claims, it looks like the labor market is finally on a solid upswing.  (For more, see this presentation from last month.)  This is going to give President Obama some of the election-year momentum that he needs.

Here's how Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Vice Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, spun the numbers this morning:

“While I am pleased that the economy is at long last adding more than the approximately 130,000 jobs necessary to keep up with the growth in population, Brady said,” “we still have a long way back to where we were before the last recession.”

“The recession ended in June 2009, more than 32 months ago,” Brady continued. “I do not think those still out of work or looking for work will take much comfort in today’s job numbers.”

“I find it incredible that the Obama administration is attributing this all too slow increase in payroll jobs to its policies,” Brady said. “This is the crowd that told us that its stimulus proposals would hold the unemployment rate below 8% and that it would be cut to nearly 6% by February 2012. A more accurate description of the economic news is that, any improvement that we are seeing is the result of the hard work of the American people and the resilience of the American economy, not from the administration’s policies, but in spite of them.”

Shorter version?  You are making inadequate progress getting us out of the hole we dug for you despite our opposition to every program you propose.