With today’s news it’s even clearer: the Obama-Pelosi-Ellsworth economic experiment has failed.

Our economy has shed another 95,000 jobs keeping the unemployment rate at 9.6 percent and sending the broader underemployment rate – including those with part-time jobs seeking full-time employment and others who have given up altogether – up to 17.1 percent.

What’s even more troubling is our nation’s “jobless rate has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 straight months, the longest stretch since the 1930s.”

Washington’s spending spree habits have contributed to our perpetual jobless economy. A Monthly Budget Review by the Congressional Budget Office released yesterday reported that, “The 2010 deficit was the second-highest shortfall—and 2009 the highest—since 1945, relative to the size of the economy.”

Quoting the CBO as saying the rise in spending was “somewhat faster than in recent years” the Washington Times called the report “a stark evaluation at a time when President Obama and Congress are working to convince voters they are pursuing a fiscally frugal course in Washington.”

Considering this news, here are a few questions for incumbent Congressman Brad Ellsworth:

• Do you still believe the stimulus bill – which you supported – has helped revive the economy? Even the federal government’s own estimates say it hasn’t.
• The two highest deficit years on record were under your watch – how can you claim to be a fiscal conservative after passing the deficit-inflating legislation that caused this?

Coats on the Road

Dan Coats visited Evansville yesterday where he spoke at the Southeast Indiana Chamber of Commerce breakfast followed by greeting festival-goers at the Fall Festival. Today, Dan will give the keynote address at the 28^th Annual Meeting of the Hoosier Heartland Corridor in Huntington.

[Disclosure: Pete Seat is the Communications Director for the Coats for Senate campaign.]