David Axelrod: I Never Said "Recovery Summer"

Katie Pavlich | August 06, 2012 1:13 PM

Yesterday during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Obama campaign chief David Axelrod told host Chris Wallace that he never used the term "recovery summer," during a heated exchange about the failing economy.

Wallace: Didn't this White House badly misjudge this recovery? I remember in 2010, two summers ago, you and Vice President Biden were running around talking about 'Recovery Summer.' That was the summer of 2010 and the fact is the White House said if you got the stimulus, the $800 billion that unemployment would stay under 8%. In fact, with the stimulus, unemployment has stayed over 8% for the last 42 months. That's three and a half years.

Axelrod: Chris, first of all, I wasn't running around saying anything other than that we were going to have to be persistent. That it took years to get in this mess, it was going to take years to get out --

Wallace: You talking about 'Recovery Summer' in 2010, sir.

Axelrod: Well you should show me the tape of me saying that. I've been very consistent about the fact that we need to be very persistent in our efforts here.

FLASHBACK:

Vice President Joe Biden today will kick off the Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying a surge in stimulus-funded projects to improve highways, parks, drinking water and other public works.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, said: “This summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with thousands of highly-visible road, bridge, water and other infrastructure projects breaking ground across the country, giving the American people a first-hand look at the Recovery Act in their own backyards and making it crystal clear what the cost would have been of doing nothing.”

“In the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans in Congress chose to play politics with economic recovery and declared the Recovery Act a failure before it even began. They made a cynical bet that if the President fails, they win. Democrats chose to act by tackling the crisis head-on. Just over a year later, the Recovery Act is putting millions of Americans to work and helping the economy grow again. But our work is far from over:”