From the February 12 edition of MSNBC Live (accessed via Nexis):
ROMER: You know, one way I describe the economy is a little bit like a Super Tanker. It doesn't change on a dime, but, you know, when you give that rudder a move, it's eventually going to move. I think that's exactly what we've done today. We've given the rudder an incredible shove and so my guess is, you know -- the president said many times, the economy will get worse before it gets better. So certainly I think the next quarter or two are still going to be rough. But we're certainly hoping by the end of the year we have turned the corner, and we're back to adding jobs rather than losing them.
From the February 25 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews (accessed via Nexis):
CHRIS MATTHEWS (host): What did you make along those lines of Chairman Bernanke's statement today that we're going to get out of this problem in two years if we get the banking thing settled? Where's the president in terms of his optimism about recovery?
AXELROD: Well, I think the president has been very clear from the beginning that it's going to take -- it's taken a while for us to get into this; it's going to take a while for us to get out of it, and it's not going to be done overnight. But we hope, over the course of the next couple of years, to see the lines turn, to see positive growth again, to see unemployment, which probably will get worse before it gets better, begin to recede again. But it's going to take time. I think the American people understand that.
From Rove's July 16 Wall Street Journal column:
So what's a president to do when the promises he made about his economic stimulus program fail to materialize? If you're Barack Obama, you redefine your goals and act as if America won't remember what you said originally. That's a neat trick if you can get away with it, but Mr. Obama won't. His words are a matter of public record and he will be held to them.
When it came to the stimulus package, the president and his administration promised, in the words of National Economic Director Larry Summers, "You'll see the effects begin almost immediately." Now it's clear that those promised jobs and growth haven't materialized.
So Mr. Obama is attempting to lower expectations retroactively, saying in an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post that his stimulus "was, from the start, a two-year program." That is misleading. Mr. Obama never said if his stimulus were passed things might still get significantly worse in the following year.
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