Biden: Administration “misread the economy” – YA THINK?!
In an interview on ABC News’ This Week, Vice President Joe Biden said that although the Administration relied on consensus economic forecasts in crafting its economic stimulus package, the White House erred in its assumption about the unemployment rate. Biden said, “The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures in most of the blue chip indexes out there. … No one was talking about that we would be moving towards — we’re worried about 10.5 percent, it will be 9.5 percent at this point. … We’re much too high.” The remarks were tepidly reported by news wires and print sources, which also noted congressional criticism. The AP reports Republican congressional leaders “expressed disappointment about the impact of stimulus spending,” while Biden “cited the economic conditions inherited from the Bush administration.”
The Washington Times notes that Biden “said it’s unfair to consider” the stimulus “program a bust because ‘no one anticipated, no one expected that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having distributed the bulk of the money.’” The Hill reports Biden “refused to rule out a second stimulus bill, which some economists have called for in order to stem job losses and spur the economy once again.”
