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Looks like Mitt Romney might want to get himself a better Communications Director than Gail Gitcho. From this Thursday night's Anderson Cooper 360: Anderson Cooper Explains Non-Partisan Congressional Budget Office To Top Romney Adviser:

Romney Communications Director Gail Gitcho says the “CBO” report from the Obama administration claimed that the stimulus would keep unemployment below eight percent. The CBO doesn't work for Obama, as Cooper notes, and it never wrote that. The eight percent figure comes from a projection authored by Obama aides before he even took office.

These surrogates get used to getting a lot of fact-free, unchallenged air time way too often. It was nice to see one of them challenged when trying to tell a few whoppers as Gitcho was here. We've already discussed the fact that the Romney campaign just can't quit lying. Here's Steve Benen's latest compilation from this week: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXII.

Full transcript via CNN:

COOPER: So, Gail, the big focus today was jobs. Something Governor Romney had to say about public sector jobs got a lot of attention a few days ago. I just want to remind our viewers what he had to say back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: He wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Didn't he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now, you know, the Obama campaign has hit those comments hard, saying he wants to fire firemen, police and teachers. Then earlier this week Governor Romney pushed back with these comments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level. And also by states. The federal government doesn't pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So, obviously, that's completely absurd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: But the federal government, though, does provide billions of dollars every year in essential funding for schools and first responders and a big percentage of that aid goes to pay for personnel. Like more than $14 billion I think under Title 1 this year. Billions more programs for improving special education and a lot of that is hiring special education teachers, community policing support. So without that federal aid, many of those positions would disappear.

Would Governor Romney want to cut those federal programs?

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As TPM noted, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell begrudgingly admitted that President Obama's policies have helped his state, undermining Mitt Romney's arguments that his policies have made the economy worse: Bob McDonnell: OK, Obama Deserves A Little Credit:

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) on Sunday sought to thread the needle between touting Virginia’s improving economic outlook and blaming President Obama for the nation’s woes — and ended up going somewhat off script.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, he initially resisted, but host Candy Crowley cornered the Mitt Romney surrogate into giving Obama a little bit of credit for Virginia’s lower-than-average unemployment rate.

“Did [the stimulus] help us in the short-run with health care and education and spending to balance the budget? Sure,” McDonnell said. “Does it help us in the long-term to really cut the unemployment rate. I’d say no.”

Crowley followed up: “So just a tiny bit of credit to the president?”

“Well sure,” the governor responded. “I think there are national policies that have had some impact.”

McDonnell’s argument — that Obama helped a little but not enough — contradicts Romney’s core 2012 message, which is that Obama has made the economy worse. It reflects the pitfalls of the overarching Republican message that the economy is lousy while many GOP governors elected in 2010 tout improvements in their states.

But McDonnell also did his best to attack Obama — specifically his energy policies and “over-burdensome” regulations — and make the case for his candidate.

As Think Progress reported back in 2010, when McDonnell was out there taking credit for his state's economy and their ability to balance their budget: Despite His Anti-Government Rhetoric, Gov. McDonnell’s Budget Surplus Results From Government Assistance:

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As the unemployment rate hit a three-year low of 8.1 percent on Friday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney escalated attacks on President Barack Obama by moving the bar to 4 percent.

"Just this morning there was some news that came across the wire that said that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.1 percent," the former Massachusetts governor told a group of supporters in Pittsburgh. "And normally, that would be cause for celebration, but, in fact, anything over 8 percent, anything near 8 percent -- anything over 4 percent is not a cause for celebration."

"But, in fact, the reason it dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 was not because we created a lot of jobs -- as a mater of fact, only 115,000 net new jobs were created. That was well beneath what it was expected to be. It should have been in the hundreds of thousands, but it wasn't. The reason the rate came down was because about 340,000 people dropped out of the workforce."

He continued: "I think it helps to have a job to create a job. And I have and I will. Now, people ask me, what will I do to help create jobs? And one thing I know I'm not going to do is go and hire a bunch more people in the federal government. ... First of all, I'd take away one of the things that frightens entrepreneurs and innovators and businesses of all kinds from hiring. I'll get rid of Obamacare!"

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, no Republican president in the last 40 years has lowered the unemployment rate below 4 percent. Under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the rate was below 4 percent for five months in 2000.

Earlier on Friday, Romney had told Fox News that Obama should be creating at least 500,000 jobs per month, something that had only happened four times in the the last 50 years.

The Republican candidate explained to the crowd in Pittsburgh on Friday that he gained a lot of insight by privately meeting with business owners.

"The numbers don't really tell you what's going on in people's lives," he said. "Before I begin an event like this, I typically am able to sit down with a few people, and in an off-the-record kind of basis, I agree not to say who they are to members of my media -- not my media! I don't have my media. I wish I had my media."

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Ed Schultz spoke to Sen. Bernie Sanders about the disappointing jobs numbers to come out this week and leave it to Bernie to make sure the conversation was devoid of any spin and to get to the heart of the problem with our economy right now, which is the severe income disparity.

Sanders did not allow Schultz to paint a rosy picture about President Obama signing the rotten piece of "bipartisan" legislation cynically titled the JOBS Act, and pointed out that it's nothing more than just more deregulation of Wall Street. Sanders agreed with Schultz on the fact that after the kind of shape they left the economy in when George W. Bush left office -- where we were purging around 700,000 jobs a month -- and the fact that they've done nothing but obstruct anything the Democrats have tried to get passed which would actually create jobs, such as the transportation bill the Senate passed that's being stalled in the House right now -- hypocritical Republicans have no right to be criticizing President Obama about anything.

And as Sanders pointed out, there was a recent report that came out which points to the real problem with our economy and whether you can claim it's recovering or not, and that's the fact that all of the wealth is being redistributed to the top.

From Sen. Sanders web site -- The rich are different; they get richer:

Source: The Washington Post
By Harold Meyerson
April 2, 2012

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