March 9, 2012Washington, D.C. – Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Vice Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee today hailed last month’s increase in the number of newly created payroll jobs last month, but cautioned that the nation’s economic recovery is proceeding too slowly to give most people comfort.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 227,000 payroll jobs last month and that the unemployment rate was 8.3% for the month of February.

“While I am pleased that the economy is at long last adding more than the approximately 130,000 jobs necessary to keep up with the growth in population, Brady said,” “we still have a long way back to where we were before the last recession.”

“The recession ended in June 2009, more than 32 months ago,” Brady continued. “I do not think those still out of work or looking for work will take much comfort in today’s job numbers.”

 “I find it incredible that the Obama administration is attributing this all too slow increase in payroll jobs to its policies,” Brady said. “This is the crowd that told us that its stimulus proposals would hold the unemployment rate below 8% and that it would be cut to nearly 6% by February 2012. A more accurate description of the economic news is that, any improvement that we are seeing is the result of the hard work of the American people and the resilience of the American economy, not from the administration’s policies, but in spite of them.”

“If the administration was truly determined to put American back to work, it would not be wasting taxpayers’ money on hair-brained schemes like Solyndra, piling up levels of debt that even the President calls ‘unsustainable,’ repeatedly calling for tax hikes on the American people, stifling sure job-creators such as the Keystone XL pipeline, and strangling the energy, health care, and financial sectors of our economy in Gordian Knots of regulation,” Brady concluded. “Didn’t Einstein define insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? That describes the approach the administration has taken on the economy these past three years to a tee.”

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