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Kudlow: March unemployment rate drop proof lower taxes work

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On Friday, the Labor Department released it March jobs report showing a significant drop in the jobless rate – to 8.8 percent, a full percentage lower from November 2010, which the Los Angeles Times reports is the steepest drop in nearly three decades.

So what changed – at least as far as government policy since then? Back in December, President Barack Obama signed a two-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts and according CNBC “The Kudlow Report” host Larry Kudlow, Obama should thank the GOP for pushing him to that policy measure. He explained that on his Friday night broadcast.

“So, did the big March jobs report put President Obama back on the road to reelection? Well, if so, guess who he has to thank — the GOP, whose tax cuts saved him from himself,” Kudlow said. “At this rate, nearly 2 million jobs are going to be created in 2011. So, the White House has got to be very happy. But here’s the sublime irony: The wake-up in job creation is a function of Republican policy. After all, for two years the Obama Democrats spent themselves into oblivion. Over trillion dollars of so-called big-government stimulus – it didn’t work. It was replaced, however by Republican tax cuts that the president signed only after a shellacking at the polls.”

The CNBC host said those tax-rate freezes were welcomed by small business, which some point to as the real engine of economic growth.

“Most business people I know — folks who work in both large and small companies – they welcomed the tax-rate freeze,” Kudlow said. “Maybe it was a truce in the war against capital and growth and small business. So you know what?  Presto – extend the tax cuts, the jobs numbers start jumping. That was incredible. Small businesses are the real measure of job creation on track for about two-and-a-half million jobs this year.”

However, there still much to be done according Kudlow on tax reform and energy prices.

“But the Republicans had better remember this,” Kudlow said. “Flat-tax reform, corporate tax reduction is going to also get the economy going to get the economy going. Don’t rest on your laurels. And also folks, as we said early in the show – all this still leaves the Achilles’ heel of jobs and the economy, namely sky-rocketing oil and gasoline prices as we just discussed. The battle for the economy has not yet been won. And guess what, November 2012 – a long ways away.”

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