“If it were not for congressional Republicans’ repeated obstruction or dilution of virtually every significant job-creation proposal sent to Congress since 2009, unemployment today would likely be under 7 percent instead of stubbornly persisting at around 8 percent.”

So if you want to create jobs in the United states of America, I suggest that you vote for every possible Democrat and Independent that you can. That you REFUSE to support any Conservative, Republican or Tea-Party member running for any elected Office.

While the article is true, and Republicans HAVE obstructed every single jobs initiative the President has put forward (including the present infrastructure jobs bill that is currently stalled in the House), part of the blame for the weak recovery is on President Obama . When the President had majorities in both Houses of Congress he should have aggressively pushed for a larger stimulus, and done an FDR style "works progress administration" to employ blue collar workers on infrastructure jobs 3 years ago. Instead he squandered his opportunity by listening to a Wall St. tool (Timothy Geithner), then Democrats lost control of the House in 2010, and Republicans have been obstructing EVERYTHING he has tried to do since then, and blaming him for the weak recovery. President Obama should have studied how the US did it after World War II - there was massive stimulus spending via the Marshall Plan, the GI bill, and the interstate highway system - and we had runaway prosperity in those years. By the way, we also had an upper marginal income tax rate of 91% in the 1950's, meaning low tax rates have nothing to do with prosperity. Had President Obama studied history (instead of listening to Timothy Geithner), he would have had a massive stimulus and a "put people to work" jobs program. Yes, the unemployment rate is probably higher than calculated - which means President Obama inherited an even higher unemployment rate than 10% from George Bush. I will be voting for the President in November, but only because Romney is pushing austerity (and austerity does not lead to prosperity - see Greece's forced austerity program).

Gridlock is completly phony. Congress can create $trillions in United States Notes without increasing our debt. These “Legal Tender Notes” could be spent into the economy to jump start it. Very low interest, long term loans could be made to Americans “underwater;” part being sent directly to pay off mortgage arrears and, if breadwinner is unemployed, a few months future payments. $1.4 trillion U.S. Notes could produce 19 million jobs, provided we get over the idea that this money has to be used in maximally “productive” ways. American’s simplistic moralism (“jobless means undeserving”) and general welfare require millions of jobs to replace jobs killed by automation, outsourcing, etc. The jobless can’t all operate earth movers or computers. But millions can engage in paid, high value, low – tool use child, senior and disability care, education, homemaking, pick and shovel burial of the electric grid, building retrofitting, using hammers, paint brushes, trash spears, and other simple tools.
Would this be inflationary? Yes! The Panic of 2008 started severe DEFLATION. Only massive targeted re-flation can counteract it. Lack of it turned the Panic of 1929 into the Great Depression of ’29 – ‘39. Mega-banks hate the idea of U.S. Notes. They lose “earned” interest because they aren’t lending Notes to us. They’ll send a thousand “Liars for Lucre” economists, etc. to argue against it. They’ll withdraw advertising to media that favor it. They’ll withdraw support from politicians who advocate it and support vocal opponents.
So look into U.S. Notes for yourself, then push the idea until they can’t ignore it any more!

It suits the Republicans (in name only!) to blame Obama, but any American who has read the Constitution knows that Congressional right wing Republicans are responsible for causing, then sustaining the Great Recession unnecessarily. Any twelve year-old can figure this out if given the facts; and the facts are readily available any where in the country! Anyone who has lived through the past three and one-half years in the U.S. knows that purposeful GOP blocking of all possible Obama/Democratic measures has reduced stimulus for job creation and other constructive legislation to a mere trickle. In addition they have cut hundreds of thousands of taxpaying workers from government jobs all over the country! It would be a shocking, even millennial disaster if Romney and the GOP won in November so they could continue the catastrophic Bush policies that put us into this mess in the first place. Yes, that is exactly what Romney promises to do!

The most Obama can do now is too little, too late. He has punted repeal of tax cuts for the rich into 2013, openly dissed progressives while giving banksters and corporate job exporters and tax-dodgers a cozy pass, put Social Security and Medicare on the table, helped keep us spending as much on defense and security as the entire rest of the world, put jobs for teachers, police and infrastructure up against austerity and loathing for govt failures, and set us up for fracas over an Obamacare plan that was modeled on a 90's Repub proposal. Even if re-elected, he will be a lame-duck, duplicitous compromiser in the context of a Congress that will be even more right-shifted and corporate than it is now.

As other commenters have noted, the cited 8.2% unemployment rate grossly understates just how bad things are, both as to falling rate of employment and as to the number of people now employed part-time and/or at minimum wage and/or devoid of significant benefits. Similarly, reporting negligible growth of OVERALL GDP masks the fact of ongoing transfer of wealth from the many to the few. The benefits are not trickling down. Rather they are literally being sucked from the many and pumped up to the few.

Forgive me a digression, triggered by sympathy for the millions represented by commenter Charles Thomas on July 7. I recently learned something appalling about Social Security. Private-sector self-employed impoverished people like him -- ie people who've paid into SS for many years -- are ineligible for SS if they work more than 15 hours a month. They face a cruel choice of working for poverty or retiring for poverty. Small wonder that they have no enthusiasm for Obama and the Dem mantra about jobs for teachers, and resent the benefits govt employees enjoy. Small wonder that so many averse to Repubs feel betrayed by Dems. The unholy combination is throwing ever more to the wolves.

The level of misunderstanding of the role of the president is growing as seen in comments by previous commentors. The president's "executive privilage" only extends to keeping certain communications secret.. He can't go out and spend the governments money without the authorization of Congress. He is only president, not king. The real problem is no secret, Senator McConnell made it very clear when he announced that his number one goal was to deny this president another term. To that end the Republicans in congress have used every tactic available. The house has passed measures that they knew, going in, would never make it through the Senate, the Senate has suffered the tortures of the filibuster on every issue which might have helped improve the economy or in any way given the president a victory. The Republicans complain about the lack of progress on jobs and then turn around a push for bills to ban abortion. They claim to have a plan but when questioned only repeat the tired positions of the failed Bush and Hoover administrations. The game has not even begun. Following Labor Day, when the campaign really heats up, all that special interest, super-pac money will begin to flow into prime time TV ads. The lies and miss-information will come fast and often. And the uninformed public will buy into it as they have in the past. That is unless we, the Progressives, the knowledgable, the informed step up and shout the truth. If your representaative in Congress is a Republican, as is mine, don't waste your time contacting him/her, write a letter to the editor, get yourself on talk radio, hold a gathering. Do something!

a few months back local newspaper had a list of 14 job bills the house had sent to senate and reid would not let them be vpted on

Wish someone told us when/where the next Great Giveaway will take place? Twelve years of Bush’s Tax Cuts have handed trillions to the rich so far. Their coffers are bursting. Rumors run our neighborhood billionaires will hand out $1000-bills and jobs to us and all. Just curios. When’s the Giveaway? Where’s the jobs? Does someone know??? SOS, we the 99% are sinking!!!

Using the methodology the US government used to calculate unemployment in 1990 Shadowstats reports the current US unemployment rate is around 23%. That the government is now quoting the figures used in this article is just a joke.