Just three days after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared in a New York Times op-ed, “Welcome to the Recovery,” The Wall Street Journal reports on another dismal monthly employment report: “The U.S. economy shed more jobs than expected in July while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%, a further sign the economic recovery may be losing momentum. Nonfarm payrolls fell by 131,000 last month as the rise in private-sector employment was not enough to make up for the government jobs lost, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday. Only 71,000 private-sector jobs were added last month while 143,000 temporary workers on the 2010 census were let go.”

This bad news follows Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement in June of the White House’s “Recovery Summer” message and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s exclamation last month, “Welcome, everyone, to the summer of recovery!” But the news between then and now hasn’t been much better. Bloomberg News reported yesterday, “[t]he number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May . . . .” And the Los Angeles Times reported in July, “The number of U.S. homes taken back by banks through foreclosure hit a record high in the second quarter … for a record total of 269,952 . . . .”

Clearly, the Obama administration’s economic policies, centered around the $862 billion deficit-financed stimulus bill, have failed to produce the recovery Democrats and administration officials predicted when the bill was passed in early 2009. Recall that key White House economic advisers Christina Romer (who announced last night she is leaving the administration) and Jared Bernstein predicted in January 2009 that the “unemployment rate with … the recovery plan,” would not exceed eight percent “with recovery plan.”

But Democrats appear to be convinced that more of the same will somehow spur a recovery. Their latest piece of legislation is a $26 billion bailout for states, which includes $10 billion for teachers, and $16 to meet unfunded federal Medicaid mandates. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is actually calling the House back from recess to vote on the bill. But in a must-read editorial today, The Washington Post blasts Democrats’ effort: “The crusade for an education jobs bill, led by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress, has always struck us as more of an election-year favor for teachers unions than an optimal use of public resources. Billed as an effort to stimulate the economy, it’s not clearly more effective than alternative uses of the cash.”

And then there are the job-killing bills that Democrats have spent most of the past 18 months working on. Pelosi actually said Democrats’ health care bill, which the NFIB says will “devastate” small businesses, their student loan takeover, which has already cost thousands of jobs, and their national energy tax proposal, which could cost more than two million jobs, “they are all three pillars of job creation.”

In a speech last Monday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell laid out just what Democrats’ Washington agenda has meant for American jobs: “Enough is enough. Democrats can call say these bills are a response to the jobs crisis all they want. But the American people have already issued their verdict. The American people have seen the bitter results of the Democrats’ so-called economic agenda. Every bill they pass only adds more burdens on the people we need to get us out of this economic ditch. Whether it’s the health care bill or financial regulation, every bill they pass seems to have as a prerequisite that it kills more jobs. If a bill doesn’t kill jobs or make it harder to create them, they’re not interested.” Last Friday’s jobs report is just another indicator of the failed economic policies of the Obama administration and the Democrat majority in Congress.

Related:

Rasmussen: Following Jobs Report, Consumer and Investor Confidence Falls to 2010 Low

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