As congressional Republicans pursue dramatic spending cuts, Rep. Chip Roy told The New York Times last week why this is such a priority for his party. “We’ve got to get people back to work, get the economy going,” the Texas Republican said.
It was a curious argument, not only because deep spending cuts would not “get the economy going,” but also because of the congressman’s emphasis on getting Americans “back to work.”
By any sensible measure, that’s already happened: The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low; the economy created 4.8 million jobs in 2022; and the economy has created over 12.8 million jobs since January 2021 — roughly double the combined total of Donald Trump’s first three years in the White House.
In fact, the public learned on Friday morning about the latest job tallies from February, and the news was surprisingly amazing: The U.S. economy added another 311,000 jobs last month, on top of the half-million jobs created in January.
It was against this backdrop that Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel released a written statement in response to the January jobs report. “Biden’s economy is not working,” the RNC chair said, as if the public hadn’t just received good news. In fact, in response to a report on jobs and unemployment, the RNC managed to issue a statement that made literally no references to jobs or unemployment, which reflected a rather creative communications strategy.
But as odd as the RNC’s statement was, at least the party was willing to acknowledge the existence of the jobs report — which is more than we can say about congressional Republican leaders.
In keeping with the recent trend, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to the job numbers by saying literally nothing about the good news. No news releases, no tweets, and no public comments. They literally found themselves speechless.
To be sure, the Kentucky Republican has an excuse: McConnell…
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