JUST IN: Biden Takes Victory Lap on Jobs Report — Torches Trump and ‘MAGA Republicans’ Over Debt
President Joe Biden took a victory lap over the latest jobs report, and torched former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” over the debt and raising the debt limit.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report Friday morning that showed much better-than-expected job growth of 253,000 jobs created in April, with an unemployment rate that ticked down slightly to 3.4%.
On Friday afternoon, President Biden spoke to reporters at the top of a meeting with his “Investing in America Cabinet” in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to extoll the new jobs report, and to accuse Republicans of threatening to destroy progress in the economy by refusing to pass a clean debt limit increase.
He began by boasting about the numbers:
This morning, we got some good news from the jobs report. We added 250,000 jobs last month. That’s on top of the 12 million jobs we’ve already had since we came in office a little over two years ago.
Unemployment rate is at 3.4%, which is the lowest in 50 years. Black employment has hit a record low, and the really good news is working age Americans are participating in the labor force with the highest rate in 15 years, not just since the pandemic, in 15 years.
And the working age women are participating at the highest rate in 75 years. Inflation is now down 40% since last summer. It’s come down the last nine months in a row. We obviously have more work to do, but we’re trending in the right direction. And I think we’re making real progress.
Biden has also been consistent in refusing to allow the debt limit to be “held hostage” by Republicans to force negotiations over the budget. In his remarks Friday afternoon, Biden continued to put pressure on Republicans to raise the debt limit without extracting concessions under threat of a catastrophic default.
The president lashed out at “MAGA Republicans” who he says are “threatening to undo” the progress he’d just described:
Unfortunately, our, I won’t say Republican because I think they’re not, they’re pretty well divided, but MAGA Republicans in Congress are threatening to undo all this progress by letting us, quote, “default on the debt” unless we agree to their demands. The two are totally unrelated.
Whether you pay the debt or not, doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what your budget is, what your budget is. Where are you going to spend money? How are you going to raise the money? What are you going to cut? Where are you going? That’s, they’re two separate issues. Two, let’s get it straight. We’re trying to hold the debt hostage to us to agree to some draconian cuts, magnificently difficult and damaging cuts.
The president also lashed out at Trump for increasing the debt with his 2017 tax cuts.
Biden also told reporters he’d be having a “major press conference this afternoon,” but according to the White House, he misspoke and was referring to his MSNBC interview.
Watch above via CNN.
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