Jay Carney: "The White House doesn't create jobs"

Alternate headline: “Jay Carney helpfully provides GOP with new campaign slogan.”

Carney listed legislative priorities the president believes will create jobs, including an infrastructure bank, the passage of free trade agreements, and tax cuts. But he would not say what was being done to further those goals while Congress takes a month-long vacation.

“The White House doesn’t create jobs,” Carney said, adding “the government, together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.”

Asked whether the White House could do more, Carney said “there is no silver bullet” to creating jobs — but he didn’t answer the question.

I don’t remember Gibbs being quite so eager to share credit with Congress when unemployment was ticking ever so slowly downward, which the White House naturally attributed to jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus. I do remember Obama telling Matt Lauer shortly after the stimulus passed that if he hadn’t turned the economy around in three years, he’d be a one-term president. How come he didn’t tell us at the time that “the White House doesn’t create jobs”? Ah well. Now that it’s all but certain the economy won’t rebound in time to hand O an easy win next year, consider this a sneak preview of their new two-pronged campaign message. Prong one: Republicans are, if not terrorists, close enough to terrorists that they can’t be trusted to govern. And prong two: Responsibility for our ruined economy is much more complicated than you think, average voter!

Here’s Tapper grilling Carney about what Obama’s doing right now, today, to get some sort of new economic package going in Congress to address the urgent threat of a double dip. You want to know what he’s doing today, Jake? He’s having a cookout. Seriously. Click the image to watch.