Gary Pearce posted on June 07, 2012 10:51
The Romney campaign says: “Under President Obama, the nation has lost 552,000 jobs.”
But the New York Times notes, “that statistic includes Mr. Obama’s first year in office, and especially the months of February, March and April, when monthly job losses from the economic collapse were at 700,000 or higher.
“Just leaving out February 2009 — before any of Mr. Obama’s policies, including the economic stimulus, had been put into place — would wipe away all 552,000 lost jobs, giving the president a record of creating 172,000 jobs.”
Plus, if you ignore Obama’s first year in office, then the President would have added about 3.7 million jobs to the economy.
Why, you ask, ignore the first year?
Because that’s what Romney’s campaign wants you to do with his first year as governor.
Ed Gillespie, a Romney adviser, argued on Fox News that his first year as governor, 2003, shouldn’t be counted in assessing his jobs record. Yes, he conceded, Massachusetts was 47th in job creation during Romney’s term was governor. But Gillespie argued that that calculation is reached by “diluting it with the first year in office, when he came into office, and it was 50th in job creation.”
In other words, Romney doesn’t want to be measured by the same yardstick he applies to the President.
As David Axelrod said, “breathtaking hypocrisy.”