: "W.House Declines to Endorse Jobs Forecast

By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday backed away from its own buoyant employment forecast that had predicted 2.6 million new jobs this year, marking the second time in as many weeks the Bush administration has reversed course on the key election-year issue of job creation.

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In a position that quickly triggered a chorus of criticism from Democrats, President Bush (news - web sites) and his top economic aides repeatedly sidestepped opportunities to embrace the optimistic job-projection figure published just a week ago in the Economic Report of the President.

But later in the day, the White House acknowledged that it no longer had a working figure for 2004 job growth. 'We don't have a projection today ... It will be months before we sit down and go through that exercise again,' Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and leading author of the presidential report, told Reuters. "