A more recent example compares Bill Clinton with George W. Bush. Under Clinton, Americans living in poverty decreased by nearly 20 percent. Under Bush, this number rose by 21 percent.

When President Barack Obama took office, he inherited an economy that was losing an average of 750,000 jobs a month. As of April, private-sector jobs have now recovered to the number we had when he started. That’s 4.2 million jobs in the past 26 months.

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So why the high unemployment rate? Largely because of public-sector job cuts — most in states that saw new GOP governors and legislatures elected in 2010 slash budgets for teachers, public safety and other service functions. Without these cuts, the Labor Department estimates our unemployment rate would be at 7.1 percent. Not the 8.1 percent it’s at now.

Under Bush, we experienced the most tepid job growth in eight decades — a dismal 2 percent over his two terms. When Mitt Romney says that Obama “isn’t working,” he neglects to mention that the Romney economic policies — more tax cuts, more deregulation, more cuts to government, the typical policy positions of the GOP for the past 50 years — have been described as “Bush on steroids.” What part of that suggests that Romney’s solutions would fare any better?

I can hear the right’s reaction now: The Bloomberg studies are too broad! Or the Labor Department numbers are too narrow! Bloomberg needs to account for geopolitical events! Whatever.

Believe me, I understand one’s gut desire to defend one’s party — even in the face of bad facts. Been guilty of it myself.

Eventually, however, individual excuses wear thin when you put together all the objective evidence. Concentrating wealth in the hands of the few and deregulating financial institutions and practices lead to speculative bubbles that eventually burst — and that brings the whole country down.

“In God we trust,” one often repeated maxim says, “all others bring data.” It’s too bad data often have no bearing on which policies get proposed or adopted. I hope that future public policy students don’t throw their hands up in dismay as they witness reflexive dismissal of jobs data from many on the far right.

Or maybe they should just become accountants — at least numbers don’t lie.

Jennifer Granholm is the former governor of Michigan, serving from 2003 to 2011. She is now host of “The War Room” on Current TV. She is also a visiting public policy and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.