Jobs report proves GOP was right about unemployment benefits extension

Charles Krauthammer said Thursday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that June’s favorable jobs report proves that conservatives were right in the debate over extending unemployment benefits and that “you can’t keep the American economy down forever.”

The Labor Department reported Thursday that the unemployment rate has fallen to to 6.1 percent, down from 6.3 percent in May. This was due in part to the addition of 288,000 jobs in June. President Obama touted the news at an event in Washington noting “we’ve now seen the fastest job growth in the United States in the first half of the year since 1999.”

However, Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, said that the good news was actually in spite of the administration’s actions, particularly with respect to the effort to extend emergency unemployment benefits.

“These six months which Obama heralds as the largest, fastest growth in jobs in the U.S. since 1999, have coincided with the six months of which we have no longer extended emergency unemployment, long term unemployment,” he said.

Krauthammer said the numbers show conservatives were right to argue against the extension of unemployment benefits last year.

“Remember at the end of last year the furious debate, the president, the Democrats saying, if you end this the sky is going to fall, people are going to go starving, there’s going to be an increase in unemployment,” he said. “It’s had precisely the opposite effect.”

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