President Obama this morning in Fairfax, Virginia reaction to today's jobs report showing the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.8 percent, its lowest level since January, 2009:
Today, I believe that as a nation, we are moving forward again. We're moving forward.
Now after losing about 800,000 jobs a month when I took office, our businesses have now added 5.2 million new jobs over the past 2.5 years. This morning, we found out that the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since I took office.
More Americans entered the workforce, more people are getting jobs. Now every month reminds us that we've still got too many of our friends and neighbors that are looking for work. And there are too many middle class families that are still struggling to pay the bills. They were struggling long before the crisis hit, but today's news certainly is not an excuse to talk down the economy to score a few political points. It's a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now. Because of your strength and resilience, the strength and resilience of the American people, we've made too much progress to return to the policies that led the crisis in the first place.
I can't allow that to happen, I won't allow that to happen, and that is why I'm running for a second term as President of the United States.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney wasn't too happy with today's numbers,
releasing a statement in which he tried to convince people that today's report was actually bad news. And I guess he was half right: it was bad news ... for his campaign.
9:12 AM PT:
Several minutes into his speech here in Abington VA, Romney has still not mentioned the latest jobs numbers
— @hollybdc via TweetDeck
9:16 AM PT: Romney finally mentions the jobs report about ten minutes into his speech...and promptly tells a big fat lie:
Romney says UE rate went down "Primarily due to the fact that more and more people have stopped looking for work."
— @ZekeJMiller via TweetDeck
9:18 AM PT: Ah, apparently the previous tweet was in error, and Romney did not say that about this report, so he did not lie. Nonetheless, he's trying to spin the report as confirmation that America is heading in the wrong direction.