President Barack Obama took a swipe at the GOP while heralding the June employment report showing 288,000 new jobs that gives Democrats a much-needed lift in the run-up to the midterm elections,
The Hill reports.
During a surprise visit to a textile factory in Washington, Obama said that Republicans are more concerned about politics than people while urging the GOP to support legislation vital to greater job growth.
"It's really important for us to understand that we could be making even stronger progress, we could be growing even more jobs, we could be creating even more business opportunities for smart, talented folks … if those of us here in Washington were focused on them, focused on you, the American people, rather than focused on politics," Obama said, according to The Hill.
The Hill said that the jobs report was a vital boost to Democrats following a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that showed
54 percent of Americans perceive that Obama is doing a poor job when it comes to the economy.
June was the first time that there had been five straight months of job growth with 200,000 new positions since the late 1990s, according to The Hill. But economist
Peter Morici says the figures remains far short of the 390,000 needed each month to keep up with population growth.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest hailed the positive jobs report, saying that it was "an indication that these crises aren't created overnight, and they're not solved overnight, and that there needs to be a long-term, coordinated strategy to strengthen our economy."
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California backed the president’s criticism of the GOP by saying that opportunities to grow the economy are being lost because establishment Republicans are kowtowing to tea party conservatives.
She said the GOP continues to block a minimum wage hike, the renewal of emergency unemployment insurance and the re-authorization of the Export-Import Bank.
"House Republicans' relentless obstruction and dysfunction are holding back our growth and threatening hundreds of thousands of American jobs," said Pelosi, according to The Hill.
The latest report led to the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee trading barbs, with each touting how they are helping the economy, The Hill said.
The DNC said in a statement, "While the GOP continues to bill their governors as the future leaders of their party, their poor economic records tell a very different story."
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus hit back, saying, "We need a Republican majority in the Senate so we can get job-creating legislation to the president's desk and job-killing policies like Obamacare out of the way of American workers."
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