Rising Unemployment: Countering Bush's Spin

Incredibly, President Bush on Friday tried to soft-pedal news that the economy has lost jobs for two months in a row. Not so Jared Bernstein, economist at the Economic Policy Institute and one of the panelists at Take Back America 2008, who in an interview with OurFuture.org calls the latest jobs report "as recessionary a report as I've seen since the last recession" in 2001 and 2002.

Speaking at the White House, Bush said, "It's clear our economy has slowed, but the good news is, we anticipated this and took decisive action to bolster the economy, by passing a growth package that will put money into the hands of American workers and businesses."

The reality, as Bernstein states in this interview, is that today's jobs report confirms that the economy for working-class people, which was never that great to begin with, has veered into a state that is too far gone to be fixed by a one-time check of a few hundred dollars and some business tax cuts.

Bernstein will be one of the presenters at Take Back America 2008. He will be detailing the impact of Bush administration economic policies on working families and help progressive activists shape a message that will rebut the ideological arguments conservatives will make as the economy continues its downhill slide.