The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this morning that the unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent last month. As you can see from the chart, the White House claimed that if we enacted the so-called stimulus, the unemployment rate today would be about 7 percent today.

It’s never wise to over-interpret the meaning on a single month’s data, and it’s also a mistake to credit or blame any one policy for the economy’s performance. But it certainly does seem that the combination of bigger government and more intervention is not a recipe for growth.

Maybe the President should reverse course and try free markets and smaller government. After the jump is a helpful six-minute tutorial.