Obama's Statement on Ohio's 7.4% Unemployment Rate

Reacting to news that Ohio's unemployment rate increased this month to 7.4%, highest since October 1992 (just before the last Democratic president was elected), Sen. Barack Obama issued this statement:

Today, we learned that another 3,700 Ohioans lost their jobs last month – and nearly 200,000 Ohio jobs have been lost since George Bush took office.

Only someone as out of touch as my opponent could say that ‘the fundamentals of the economy are strong’ at a time when so many families are struggling. Amid the greatest economic crisis of our time, we desperately need to change the way Washington and Wall Street work so that middle class families aren’t left to fend for themselves while CEOs get tax breaks and golden parachutes.

We can’t afford four more years of the Bush-McCain economic policies that led our economy into this mess – we need to change direction and start putting America’s jobs and America’s workers first.

Hear, hear.