A former Obama administration official admitted Sunday the president is creating jobs at an “unacceptably low rate.”
“Nobody is happy with the level of job creation today,” Steven Rattner, President Obama’s former car czar, told “Fox News Sunday.”
But Mr. Rattner shifted the blame for the stagnant economy to the Bush administration and cautioned that without Mr. Obama’s economic policies, there would be even fewer jobs.
“We are growing slowly, but we are still growing,” he said.
Mr. Rattner pointed to jobs numbers that Mr. Obama has been campaigning on. He said Mr. Obama arrived to find 700,000 jobs a month being lost, but has, in fact, added 4 million jobs since January 2010.
Mr. Rattner pointed out that the president has spent “three years in the trenches fighting this economy war” and believes that “actually gives him more qualifications” than his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.
Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom pointed out that Mr. Romney has a private business background, which would bode well for job creation, and attacked the president’s inexperience.
“We gave the keys to the largest economy in the world to a person that did not have any previous executive experience,” he told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, told “Fox News Sunday” that job creators are getting “hammered” under Mr. Obama.
“This administration, the policies are hostile to job growth,” Mr. Gillespie said. “The only thing that’s going to change it is changing the policies, and that means changing the person in the White House.”
Mr. Gillespie pointed to the president’s stimulus bill and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as policies that are contributing to a “stagnant economy.”
He also blamed the president for holding hostage the Keystone XL pipeline project, which would create jobs.
“It’s not that we don’t think this president is trying,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said. “I think he is. It’s just his policies are not working.”
• Tim Devaney can be reached at tdevaney@washingtontimes.com.
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