Today’s latest unemployment report, showing a 9.8% unemployment rate for November, marks the 16th consecutive month that the unemployment rate has been at or above 9.5% – the longest period since the Great Depression.  Despite this, yesterday, Democrats voted to raise taxes on small businesses, putting a target on the back of every worker in every small business in America. 

Clearly, Democrat policies have continually failed to create jobs. As the chart below shows, they promised unemployment would be 7% today if their stimulus passed, yet it remains stuck near 10%.  Since their stimulus passed, a total of 48 out of 50 States have lost jobs.  Democrats’ continued refusal to pay for new spending has driven our debt to $14 trillion – a level that undermines the recovery of the economy and has cost us as many as 1 million jobs.  That all has left millions of Americans collecting unemployment checks instead of paychecks.

Sources: January 2009 Romer/Bernstein Report and actual U.S. Department of Labor data. 

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