“THE ECONOMY IS ON STEROIDS,” an administration official told me last week, before the latest jobs report was released. The April jobs report, released late last week, certainly supported that view, at least as to the growth rate. The economy added 288,000 jobs last month, well above the 150,000 most economists were expecting. The frosting on the cake was an upward revision of the previous month’s report, from 308,000 new jobs to 337,000. If the economy continues this performance, more than two million new jobs will be created by the time voters go to the polls in November.

Bad news for the president’s critics. They say that an economy on steroids might be growing, but it is excessively dependent on an artificial and unhealthy stimulus. The steroids being administered to the economy include a federal deficit that exceeds 4 percent of GDP, a trade deficit running at 5 percent of GDP, derisory interest rates, and tax refunds that are keeping consumers in the shops.