White House Pulls Back on Number of Additional Jobs

President Bush on Wednesday distanced himself from his economic advisors’ claim that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year, enough to erase virtually all the job losses incurred during his first term.

Bush declined to endorse the jobs estimate during a joint Oval Office appearance with Tunisian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali. When a reporter asked about the projection, Bush said, “I think the economy is growing. And I think it’s going to get stronger.”

Bush’s comment came a day after two of his top economic advisors, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, refused to publicly endorse the job estimate, issued nine days ago by Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.

“I think we are going to create a lot of jobs,” Snow said Tuesday in Washington state. “How many I don’t know, but we’re going to keep working on it.”

Congressional Democrats on Wednesday assailed Bush for providing “broken promises and mixed messages” to the 2.3 million workers who have lost their jobs since he took office in 2001. In a letter sent to the president, Democratic leaders said his shift on jobs estimates raised serious questions about whether “the administration’s economic policies are in disarray.”

“We urge you to provide meaningful jobs predictions that all Americans, including your own Cabinet, would find credible,” the six Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, wrote.

Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential front-runner, also took the administration to task during a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio.

“Now they’re already walking backwards on their own predictions,” Kerry said.

The Massachusetts senator said the president needed to do a better job putting Americans back to work.

“What it says to me is they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to economic policy,” he said.

The jobs estimate is the latest partisan flap over the economy. Last week, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, sent shock waves through Capitol Hill and the campaign trail by advocating the benefits of having U.S. businesses ship jobs overseas.

“This president faces a credibility gap with his own economic team that’s as wide as the employment gap for millions of American workers,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), an advisor in the Clinton White House.

Bush’s decision not to endorse the jobs projection, included in his annual economic report to Congress, indicates concern among Bush aides that the actual number of jobs to be added before November’s election will fall short of that mark.

It also removes a benchmark by which the effectiveness of Bush’s policies could be measured. Democrats, who earlier denounced the estimate as overly optimistic, could have used it against the president if actual job growth fell below Bush’s own higher projection.

Although the White House will not affirm its jobs projection, it also will not acknowledge that it erred in predicting the number of jobs to be created this year.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, in a sometimes contentious briefing with reporters, played down the significance of the projection and insisted that Bush was worried only about actual job growth and not an economist’s prediction.

“People can debate the numbers all they want, but the president’s going to be looking at the actual number of jobs being created,” he said. “And the number of jobs being created is growing.”

The economy has added 366,000 jobs since August, government figures show.