Holtz-Eakin Downplays Positive Unemployment Numbers

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THINK PROGRESS - Yesterday, the Republican National Committee featured former McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin on a conference call pushing back against positive takes on the new unemployment numbers. Though Holtz-Eakin said that the new data “cannot be considered good news,” he claimed that “no one would argue that the stimulus has done nothing.” But earlier this week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said just that, before catching himself and saying that he meant it had done “very little”:

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, in a conference call with reporters after Obama’s event, suggested that so far, it’s mostly talk.

“We’re still losing jobs,” he said. “In fact, I find it interesting and ironic that the president was today in Indiana, again repeating some of the same old broken promises about the stimulus and the jobs it’s saved. I don’t know how we measure that. Certainly, what we’ve seen put on the table so far has done nothing, very little, to create jobs.“

In a separate interview with CNN, Steele was asked whether he believed that “the raise in home sales or the Dow — the level of the Dow — or even the GDP raising as any part of this” was a “result of the stimulus package or anything.” “No, I don’t,” responded Steele. Private economic analysts believe the stimulus “added at least 1 percentage point to economic growth in the second quarter.”