President Obama addressed Friday’s jobs report, which showed that only 96,000 jobs were created in August, by saying that it showed continued progress recovering from the recession. Obama hastened to add that it is still not good enough — and shifted responsibility to Republicans and Congressional gridlock.
“Today we learned that after losing around 800,000 jobs a month when I took office, businesses once again added jobs for the 30th month in a row — a total of more than 4.6 million jobs. But that’s not good enough. We know it’s not good enough. We need to create more jobs, faster. We need to fill the hole left by this recession, faster. We need to come out of this crisis, stronger than when we went in.
“And there’s a lot more that we can do. You know, when Congress gets back to town next week, you need to send them a message: Go ahead and give middle-class families and small businesses the confidence of knowing that their taxes, your taxes, will not go up next year. Everybody agrees we should not raise taxes on the middle class. Let’s go ahead and get that done, let’s get that done now. And by the way, if the Republicans are serious about being concerned about joblessness, we could create a million new jobs, right now, if Congress would pass the jobs plan that I sent to them a year ago. Jobs for teachers, jobs for construction workers, jobs for folks who’ve been looking for work for a long time. We can do that. But I need your help, New Hampshire, I need your voices.”
