Dressed To The Nines

The White House is now freely admitting 9% plus unemployment will remain well into 2012, which, well, anybody paying attention could have told you.

Obama's budget office initially calculated its economic forecast based upon data available through June. Even that data presaged an 8.8 percent average unemployment rate in 2011 and an 8.3 percent average rate next year. But the mid-session review got delayed, and when the Office of Management and Budget revised it to incorporate the data through the end of August, the picture became much gloomier. Unemployment will average 9.1 percent this year, and 9.0 percent next year, OMB concluded, and won't dip below 7 percent until 2015 at the earliest.

The revised figures "reflect the substantial amount of economic turbulence over the past two months," OMB says, triggered by the European debt crisis, the earthquake in Japan, congressional brinkmanship over the debt ceiling among others. They also take into account the fact that GDP growth in the first half of fiscal year 2011 turned out to be significantly lower than originally thought.

Despite these and other setbacks, "we are not forecasting a double-dip recession," Katharine Abraham, a member of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters Thursday.

The report does not incorporate the impact of Obama's yet-to-be-unveiled jobs plan which, if enacted, would likely alter near-term unemployment and fiscal figures. 

So yes, look for Republicans to do everything they can to block a jobs program.  Republicans want 9% unemployment and they want voters to blame President Obama, period.  That's kind of the other no-brainer in this report, that the GOP believes they have nothing to gain from any assistance to the economy.

Well, until the next Republican President, that is.