As President Barack Obama once again pivots to focus on economic growth, Press Secretary Jay Carney declared Thursday that "the White House doesn't create jobs."It's true that the White House does not and cannot create jobs on its own, but, I dunno, in the absence of a series of insistent requests for revenue for robust job-creation programs, e.g. infrastructure reinvestment, and the absence of repeated entanglements with House Republicans denying those requests, it seems a little, well, peevish to retort that the White House doesn't create jobs when asked what the White House is doing to create jobs.
...Carney listed legislative priorities the president believes will create jobs, including an infrastructure bank, the passage of free trade agreements, and tax cuts. But he would not say what was being done to further those goals while Congress takes a month-long vacation.
"The White House doesn't create jobs," Carney said, adding "the government, together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation."
Asked whether the White House could do more, Carney said "there is no silver bullet" to creating jobs — but he didn't answer the question.
I don't think anyone's expecting the President to wave a magic wand and poof three million jobs into existence, but I do think there's some rather reasonable expectation that there be more focus on job creation and more support for economic policies that stand a snowball's chance of creating jobs, as opposed to being exceedingly likely to result in deeper unemployment.
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