9.1%

We were told that the stimulus bill would keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8.5%.  How'd that work out?  8.5% is looking pretty good these days with the rate currently at 9.1%.  That's a slight drop from last month, but look at the key paragraph in the story:

Still, while the unemployment rate dropped one-tenth of a percentage to 9.1 percent, that was attributed to people stopping their hunt for work, effectively removing them from labor rolls. Likewise, the economy needs twice as many net jobs per month to rapidly reduce unemployment. The rate has topped 9 percent in every month except two since the recession officially ended in June 2009.

When you factor the people who've given up and stopped looking back into the equation the real unemployment rate is something around 16%, and in certain communities (such as African-Americans) it's far worse.

Administration officials, other liberals, and many in the press say the president "has run out of bullets" to fire at the economy to spur growth.  Baloney.  There are lots of things this administration could do that would spur an immediate positive reaction in the economy, such as reducing or eliminating job-killing regulations, opening up energy exploration, killing Obamacare, and providing permanent corporate tax reductions that would give companies confidence they could afford to expand their businesses and hire new people.  Obama will do none of those things.  Instead he'll demand another job-killing stimulus bill designed to throw billions of tax dollars at his union cronies in an election year.  He won't get it.

Rather than do something that will work, he'll continue to insist on failed strategies that have no chance of passage in the House.  Unable to get those, he'll punish America by letting the economic problems continue far longer than they should.

He'll be lucky to get the unemployment rate back to 8.5% by election day next year.

Oh, by the way, the average unemployment rate during the evil George Bush administration was 5.3%.