(Newser)
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Talk about an ambitious campaign promise: Mitt Romney today assures the American people that should he be elected, the unemployment rate would fall to 6% during his first term. "I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we'd put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," he tells Time in an interview picked up by CNN and the Washington Post.
The Congressional Budget Office expects the unemployment level, currently at 8.1%, to remain above 8% through next year. But based on the current rate of growth, it is predicted to hit 7% by the end of 2015 and 5.5% by the end of 2017, meaning Romney may actually see his dream come true—regardless of whether he's elected. While Romney has mentioned a specific unemployment goal before—5.9% when he released his economic plan—he hasn't repeated that number since September 2011.
