Mitt Romney Says Unemployment Will Be Under 6% By The End of His First Term

Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney sat down for an interview with Time’s Mark Halperin. He decided in the interview to make the first majorly bold claim of the election season. He said that by the end of his first term as president he would get the unemployment rate down to or below 6 percent from its current rate of just over 8 percent.

Romney said in the interview,

“I can’t possibly predict precisely what the unemployment rate would be at the end of one year. I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, or perhaps a little lower. It depends in part upon the rate of growth for the globe, as well as what we are seeing here in the United States. But we get the rate down quite substantially. And frankly, the key is, we are going to show such job growth that there is going to be competition for employees again and wages will see the end of this decline.”

Presidential candidates tend to overindulge with making grand promises with no fear of repercussions. If the unemployment rate drops to below 6% on Romney’s first term he will say “see I told you so” if it doesn’t he will just say that circumstances changed since he made the statement.

According to a January 2012 Congressional Budget Office analysis, the unemployment rate is already expected to hit 6 percent around 2016. This did not stop Romney from making the extremely bold claim when asked about the Fiscal Cliff that the American economy will supposedly far over if the Bush Tax cuts are not extended and the mandatory spending cuts are implemented in 2013. Romney suggested he didn’t even have to change any policies. That just by being elected the business community will be so relieved that a businessman is charge the economy will start to grow.

The following is the exchange,

“Halperin: So even though it’s a fiscal cliff, you think you’ll have time because just your election will allow people to sort of take a breath and wait and see these things dealt with potentially over time rather than right away?””Romney: Well, there are different options, as you understand. One is to wait and deal with these one by one or deal with them in a grand bargain. The other is to have some kind of continuing resolution to say let’s leave things as they are as opposed to the cliff, leave it for 30 days or 90 days as we work out these other programs. It’s something that the Congress and I, if I’m fortunate enough to be President, would work out and hopefully reach a measure that had no disruptive effect on the economy.”