Democrat: Obama should not have said unemployment would peak at 8 percent

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said that President Barack Obama "should not have said that unemployment would peak at 8 percent," claiming the commander in chief made a mistake in underestimating how bad the nation's economy was when he took office.

During an appearance on Fox News, Nadler said, "The president's mistake, and it was a mistake, was to underestimate how bad the situation was we inherited under [President George W.] Bush because he should not have said that unemployment would peak at 8 percent when Mark Zandi, [Sen. John] McCain's [R-Ariz.] adviser, was saying it would be going to go to 12 percent without the stimulus and 10 percent with the stimulus."

Republicans have repeatedly noted the Obama administration's predictions on the nation's unemployment rate if Congress passed the stimulus. Eleven months after the $787 billion stimulus bill was signed into law, the nation's unemployment rate is 10 percent. The White House and some Democrats on Capitol Hill have said the stimulus prevented a depression.

Nadler said, "We're starting to turn it around but we haven't acted enough. We ought to act more... The problem is we didn't do enough."

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