On Monday night President Obama held an online “Hangout,” where he again repeated the same two statistics being held out as proof of his Administration’s success. Although the president keeps repeating favorable statistics, the full picture is quite different.

AFP President Tim Phillips said, “While the Obama Administration brags about 22 months of private sector growth, they fail to provide context; that pace is so sluggish that it doesn’t even keep up with basic demographic growth. It’s a nice statistic to repeat, but there’s no real economic impact.”

The President’s campaign team, Obama for America, has also been heavily advertising that the economy added 2.5 million jobs, but that number that is only half of the equation; we’re still suffering from a net loss of 1.7 million jobs since Obama took office. Unemployment, while quite high, is actually far higher when we include the 700,000 or so people who have entirely given up looking for a job, and are no longer counted in the workforce. If we used the same size of workforce today as when Obama took office, unemployment would be 10.9%

Phillips continued, “Just today, the CBO brought up another trend we’re unlikely to hear Obama talking about: 4 straight years of trillion-plus deficits. It’s no secret that the president is on track to pile-on more debt than the previous 43 presidents combined, while allowing Harry Reid’s Senate to operate for more than 1,000 days without passing a single budget.

“Americans deserve leadership, but are instead getting political spin and half-truths from an Administration that appears to be more focused on campaigning than solving our fiscal crisis.”