Obama: "High unemployment is due to government layoffs."

It's an unquestioned article of faith among Democrats and liberals that Obama is the smartest guy in the room--much as Bill Clinton was said to have been. Just one problem: For the smartest guy in the room, he says lots of things that are not just wrong, but obviously, ludicrously so.

"Been to fifty-seven states."

"Corpse-man."

"Speaking Austrian."

One of the things Obama and the Democrats in congress were woefully wrong about was believing that spending $800 Billion in borrowed money would be effective in "stimulating" the economy. Truth is, the huge expenditure of Chinese money--which your children will be repaying all their lives--did almost no good. Almost two years later unemployment is still 9 percent--and that's just the "official" figure.

But the Dems can't admit this gigantic Keynesian stimulus failed. So Obama (or someone near him) had an idea: Why not blame the awful unemployment rate on the notion that government has been reducing the number of employees on the public payroll!

Hey, 52% of the voters will believe anything.

So, speaking at a town hall on the economy this morning (May 12), Obama blamed the high unemployment rate on ‘huge layoffs of government workers’ at federal, state and local levels,” according to CBS reporter Mark Knoller. Here's the full quote from Duh Won:

The reason the unemployment rate is still as high as it is, in part, is because there have been huge layoffs of government workers at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, social workers–-have really taken it in the chin over the last several months.

Problem is, that's not even close to being true, as Jim Geraghty explains at National Review. The total number of government employees at all levels was:

January 2009: 22,471,000.
January 2010 (Obama takes office): 22,376,000.
April 2011: 22,594,000 (preliminary).

So, contra to Obozo's claim, not only have there *not* been huge layoffs of government employees, total government employment is essentially unchanged--actually slightly up--since he took office.

But of course no one in the lying media will call him on the lie--because they're all on his side.