Politics

Obama risks ‘Recovery Summer’

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The White House on Thursday launched a six-week public-relations campaign to shift attention from the disaster in the Gulf to the jobs the administration boasts of creating or saving through its economic stimulus.

But analysts and pollsters say the “Recovery Summer” effort, headed by Vice President Joe Biden, may be politically risky at a time when unemployment remains around 10 percent and it is not entirely clear how quickly the economy will right itself.

President Barack Obama, Biden and other administration officials described the campaign as a “six-week-long focus on the surge in Recovery Act infrastructure projects that will be under way across the country in the coming months — and the jobs they’ll create well into the fall and through the end of the year.”

But as Obama prepares to travel to Columbus, Ohio, on Friday to attend the groundbreaking of what his administration calls the 10,000th stimulus-package road project, Republicans are repeating their mantra: Where are the jobs?

The GOP’s criticism got a boost this week when jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 12,000.

Full Story: Obama risks ‘Recovery Summer’ – TheHill.com