Before the stock market went in the tank a few years ago, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan warned of “irrational exuberance” by people buying stocks, wrongly thinking that the market would be great forever.

Fast forward to last month at a campaign event in California, where a car chassis maker told President Bush that his tax cuts would allow him to hire two new workers this year.

“When he says he’s going to hire two more, that’s really good news,” Bush said, as reported by the Washington Post. “A lot of people are feeling confident and optimistic about our future so they can say, ‘I’m going to hire two more.’ They can sit here and tell the president in front of all the cameras, ‘I’m going to hire two more people.’ That’s confidence!”

It was hard not for the pundits to snicker over President Bush’s irrational exuberance over the potential creation of two jobs, but he doesn’t have much to hang his hat on. There have been 2.2 million net U.S. jobs lost during the Bush presidency, who has predicted that the economy will improve sufficiently to create 2.6 million this year alone.

In reality, the nation created only 21,000 more jobs in February, well short of the 183,000 jobs per month that would need to be created to meet Bush’s expectations for a recovery in the job market.

“It’s hard to imagine a more negative reading of the labor market,” said Larry Mishel, president of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute. “The private sector created no jobs. Wage growth is minimal. Four hundred thousand people dropped out of the labor market.”

Bush’s rosy outlook on the job market is a good part of the reason the Republican-led Congress has refused to extend federal jobless benefits after they ran out on Jan. 1. During this election year, they are acting as if the job market is improving, but they’re getting hit over the head with hard facts. There are 336,000 Michiganians without work – and we’re a full point above the national jobless rate, at 6.6 percent. Michigan has the third-worst jobless rate in the nation.

Michigan’s construction industry is also reeling, with most local unions having about a quarter of their membership out of work and some with as much as 60 percent unemployment.

But Republicans congressional representatives around the country and in Michigan have consistently refused to extend federal unemployment benefits, which expired at the end of last year.

“Republican inaction and indifference toward our nation’s jobless recovery, and our nation’s unemployed workers, must end,” said Michigan Rep. Sander Levin, D-12th District, who has taken up the cause of extending benefits. “We must act to jump-start job growth and re-start the unemployment insurance program to get families through these tough economic times.

“Since they allowed the program to expire in December , 760,000 unemployed workers have run out of unemployment insurance benefits without finding work.”

Building trades workers who are hurting under the GOP’s refusal to release additional jobless money may wish to contact their representative and let them know that there are people who desperately need the additional money.

Last month, Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney told Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council delegates “not to bother” lobbying Michigan’s Democratic members of Congress about extending unemployment benefits. “They’re already on our side; you’d be preaching to the choir,” he said.