House Republicans Find Gray Lining in Brighter Jobs Report

House Republicans have their message on the economy, and they are sticking to it.

Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report, with 243,000 new payroll positions added in January and another decline in the unemployment rate, may have sent stock prices higher, but Republicans, speaking at a news conference on Friday, found the dark gray lining in the silver cloud.

“Today is an indication of another failure of this president’s policies, 36 months in a row of 8 percent-plus unemployment,” lamented Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the House Republican Conference.

“The president’s team is gonna trot out their happy faces today,” Representative Bill Flores of Texas, warned. “But the American people are gonna say, ‘not so fast.’”

And Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington compared the current recovery with the recovery of the early 1980s recession under President Ronald Reagan, a party icon. She asserted that the Reagan recession was deepe and worse (a debatable assertion given the sudden and severe collapse in 2008).

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By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Source: nytimes.com