Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney/AFP
A Romney presidency would preside over a “very dramatic change” to the business environment, the ex-governor of Massachusetts told Time magazine.
“I can’t possibly predict precisely what the unemployment rate will be at the end of one year,” the presumptive Republican nominee said when asked how much his policies would affect the stubbornly high jobless rate by the end of 2013.
“I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to six percent or perhaps a little lower,” said Romney, a multimillionaire former businessman.
“It depends in part upon the rate of growth of the globe, as well as what we’re seeing here in the United States.”
The comments came on the day Romney addressed a Latino business coalition where he slammed his Democratic rival for coming down hard on his business record, warning the president that he should not “attack success.”
“He just doesn’t have a clue what to do to get this economy going,” Romney said. “I do.”
The unemployment rate currently stands at 8.1 percent.
Since Obama took office in January 2009, the jobless rate has arched from 7.8 percent at inauguration to 10 percent as the impact of the financial crisis spread, and slowly back down to today’s rate.
Romney and other Republicans are quick to remind Obama of his own pledge to get the unemployment rate below eight percent during his presidency, something that has yet to happen in the 39 months since he took office.
