Obama, "Private sector is fine"
President Obama twice commented at a press conference in the White House that "the private sector is doing fine." In response Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said the President must be on another planet.
Following the quickly changing statements, The Weekly Standard reports, "It's absolutely clear the economy is not doing fine," Obama said, following up his comments from the morning.
"That’s the reason I had a press conference. That’s why I spent yesterday, the day before yesterday, this past week, this past month and this past year talking about how we can make the economy stronger. The economy is not doing fine. There are too many people out of work. The housing market is still weak, too many homes underwater and that’s precisely why I asked Congress to start taking some steps that can make a difference,” Obama added
The president's second round of comments on the economy are being called a 'backtrack' and a 'clarification.' But it actually appears that Obama decided to double-down on his earlier remarks.
"Now, I think if you look at what I said this morning and what I've been saying consistently over the last year, we've actually seen some good momentum in the private sector," Obama said in his follow-up remarks. "We've seen 4.3 million jobs created -- 800,000 this year alone -- record corporate profits. And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy."
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell responds to President Obama's address made Friday morning in which he urged Congress to take action on jobs and said the private sector was “doing fine.”
FOX NEWS: Here's a quote from the president he said, "After losing jobs for 25 months in a row our businesses have actually created jobs for 27 months in a row; 4.3 million jobs in all." It sounds pretty good. Your response?
SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: Well the President must be on another planet. I mean we just--you just saw the jobs figures last Friday. To argue that the private sector is in good shape. It seems to me as to be completely disconnect from reality. We've got a very, very sluggish economy; a very slow growth rate. We're just barely bumping along and I commend his creativity in trying to find some bright spots, but I don't think very many Americans see any.