The 10.1 Percent Solution

NOBODY PAID MUCH attention last fall when Tip O'Neill predicted that the unemployment rate would hit 10 percent by the 1982 elections Yesterday, however, the Labor Department made a prophet out of the white-maned House Speaker by announcing that 10.1 percent of the American work force can't find a job. But whether the news of the highest jobless rate in 42 years will make electoral monkeys out of President Reagan and his fellow Republicans is another matter altogether.

Come November, much of the outcome in the 468 House and Senate races will depend on the President's success in Greatly Communicating his version of economic history to the recession-weary voters. Not only Go Democrats who criticize his program for recovery have no better ideas, but "they" rapidly becoming the First Pronoun are responsible for the nearly four decades of postwar economic blundering that got us into this mess in the first place.

The economy was indeed weak when Ronald Reagan took oil ice, largely because of the one of his predecessor's policies that he has continued to follow--tight money. The rest of Reagan's macroeconomic policy has all the coherence of a Jackson Pollack canvas--a splash of tax breaks for the rich, a big dollop for the Pentagon, and plenty of white space for the poor and working class Reagan's defense buildup might conceivably create a few jobs, but unity for highly skilled workers and engineers in the already humming weapons plants of the Sun Belt.

In addition the savage Reagan as such on the Federal budget has cost plenty of jobs. He has "zeroed out" Federal job-creation programs like CETA and the Community Services Administration. In June, the President vetoed a bill by Rep. Henry B. Gonzales (DTex) to aid the embattled housing industry--thus thwarting potential recovery in the slumping timber and construction industries. And the President most recently showed his animus toward "quick fix" job creation by vetoing a $14.1 billion supplemental appropriations bill because it contained a "budget-busting" senior citizens employment program.

The President's carping is especially pathetic in light of the hype that accompanied the 1980 supply-side millenium. In the President's own words of last September, the tax break budget cut bonanza was supposed to usher in "an American Renaissance that will astound the world" a transformation so radical that past Democratic errors couldn't possibly stand in its way.

So far, however, the only thing more pathetic than the President's effort to blame the past for his own failure has been the Democrats response to the Great Communicator's logic-defying vertical onslaught. Most polls still defect a sizable--though diminishing--"give the man a chance" sentiment that the Democrats have not yet been able to dislodge. All of which may mean that the economy will have to get much worse before 1984 it Reagan himself is to be defeated. And if the economy actually improves, then Reagan will look just as prophetic as Tip O'Neill looks now which could make him very tough to beat indeed.