Be sure to thank the President and Congress. This week, with news of some 467,000 jobs lost in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the U.S. has now lost about two million jobs since the economic stimulus package passed. Even more notable is that the average workweek has been slashed to 33 hours – the lowest number on record. When the President signed his $787 billion stimulus package into law, he confidently asserted that unemployment would not exceed eight percent. If Congress hadn’t passed it, he warned, it would rise to nine percent by 2010. Well, unemployment reached 9.5 percent last month, meaning, by the President’s own logic, that his stimulus package has failed.

If you listen to Obama, however, whatever jobs weren’t lost were either “saved or created” by the stimulus. In other words, credit for whatever hasn’t gone wrong goes to the Obama administration and its Democratic allies who control Congress. Which is why we have already started to hear hints of a second stimulus package on the way. On CNBC Thursday, White House economic advisor Christina Romer answered the question of whether there would be a second stimulus with: “We’ll do whatever it takes.”