Weigel

244,000 New Jobs in April

This

isn’t

terrible. Almost 250,000 jobs added to the economy in April, and the numbers for February and March are revised upward, respectively, by 41,000 and 5,000. The unemployment rate rises from 8.8 percent to 9.0 percent, but we can point to optimism for some of that, because we see “989,000 discouraged workers inApril, a decline of 208,000 from a year earlier.” All this despite the pressure of gas prices!

      UPDATE: Eric Cantor comes out on message:
    

        With regard to the upcoming debt limit vote, at a time when we borrow 40
        
cents of every dollar we spend, any move to raise the debt limit must be accompanied by immediate spending cuts and binding reforms so that we don’t continue to push our country down the road to bankruptcy. We need real cuts and real reforms today without raising taxes so that we can begin to get our fiscal house in order, boost the economy and get people back to work.

      It seems like ages ago when Democrats were citing economists to say that spending cuts hurt growth.