To those of you who visit this blog and think that the economy led by President Bush is in fine shape, I am interested in your response to these numbers. #1 The net job losses under this president are the worst since Herbert Hoover was president. That's a good economy? #2 The president has moved us from a time of $100 billion+ surpluses to $400 billion+ deficits, and his budgets show that he doesn't plan to present a single balanced budget if he's elected for a second term. And of course it should be noted that those deficits numbers would be even higher if he wasn't currently counting the Social Security surpluses (you know, those things that Al Gore wanted to put away in a lockbox so they there would actually be some way to pay for the impending retirement of the Baby Boom generation, but that George Bush has instead chosen to spend) in his budgets. #3 Any president who MIGHT want to get back to proposing balanced budgets is going to be in a serious fix after Bush's budget "leadership" since the conditions that allowed us to overcome the deficits of the 1980's (tax increases, cuts in military spending, and the biggest boom in the American economy in decades) aren't likely to exist again in the near future. Plus the deficits are likely to get vastly worse if the president follows through with his current plans (making his tax cuts permanent, "reforming" the Alternative Minimum Tax), though how bad things will get is hard to tell. For one thing we only budget 5 years in advance, and the president is interested in further slashing the taxes we'd be taking in starting in 2010. Secondly, the administration has continually acted to change the way the government measures economic indicators if it thinks the numbers that come out using those measures will damage the administration. As one example (there are a number of others) check out this from Andrew Tobias:
BUSH TO ALTER ECONOMIC STATS AGAIN :Not that the Bush team won’t do its best to persuade us otherwise. According to The Daily Mislead (click to see the full version, with sourcing):
Last week, the Census Bureau released statistics showing that for the first time in years, poverty had increased for three straight years, while the number of Americans without health care increased to a record level. But instead of changing its economic and health care policies, the Bush administration today is announcing plans to change the way the statistics are compiled. The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods.
In a Bush administration press release yesterday, the Census Bureau said next week it “will announce a new economic indicator" as "an additional tool to better understand" the economy. The change in statistics is being directed by Bush political appointees and comes just 60 days from the election. It will be the first modification of Census data in 40 years.
This is not the first time the White House has tried to doctor or manipulate economic data that exposed President Bush's failed policies. In the face of serious job losses last year, the Associated Press reported "the Bush administration has dropped the government's monthly report on mass layoffs, which also had been eliminated when President Bush's father was in office." Similarly, Business Week reported that the White House this year "unilaterally changed the start date of the last recession to benefit Bush's reelection bid." For almost 75 years, the start and end dates of recessions have been set by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private nonpartisan research group. But the Bush administration decided to toss aside the NBER, and simply declare that the recession started under President Clinton.
There are a host of other economic numbers that show terrible backsliding under this presidency. Consider these (cited in the Tobias post linked to above): Change in real median household income (2003 adjusted dollars): Bush II: – $1,535; Clinton: + $5,489; Bush I: – $1,314. Change in number of Americans living in poverty: Bush II: + 4,280,000; Clinton: – 6,433,000; Bush I: + 6,269,000.
Are there some economic indicators that show that Bush's economic record has been more successful than these numbers indicate? Sure. And I'm not saying that the sitation is analogous to the early 1930's. But I do think that these numbers show that under the president's stewardship our economy, the most powerful in the world, has underperformed and that has substantially hurt the lives of many Americans, particularly those who are most vulnerable. Furthermore, I think the fundamental priorities of the administration seem pointed in the direction of making our economy resemble that of a mid-twentieth century Latin American dictatorship (ever more massive debts and deficit spending, plus policies that heighten differences between the haves and the have nots). You see the this in the nature of the Bush team's tax preferences, their desire to move in a second term to a flat tax or a national sales tax, their profligate spending, their interest in increasing the size of the state and funneling ever more money to their allies (be it the Halliburtons of the world or Pat Robertson's religious "charities"), their unwillingness to put their money where their mouth is on education spending ... and all that doesn't even begin to touch on major economic problems tied to their foreign policy, from little interest in reforming the nation's energy sector to their pro-tariff policies. And I haven't yet brought up the economic time-bomb that the president is choosing to ignore - Medicare. Is this what we should expect in a leader? And is this the direction we want our country to go in?
A country's economy is in many ways its back-bone, and we benefit greatly from the fact that over our history the United States has built a mighty economy. But looking back at the last four years I think it's very hard to argue that the president has strengthened our economy (or at the very least that it couldn't have been notably stronger under different stewardship). And given what we've seen of his policy preferences so far, 4 more years of George W. Bush could greatly weaken many of the fundamentals that have powered and enriched this nation and its people. That is extremely troubling, as is the fact that many of the have-nots, and even some of the haves, could easily slip into poverty and despair. Sadly, many already have.
Posted by armand at September 5, 2004 11:37 AM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsArmand, I can't believe you're this naive. It takes years not months to affect the economy with even the best policies, do you really not see that? Do you really not see that the slowing economy when plotted on a graph easily reveals this trend started in Clinton's last administration with the dot com bubble burst and continued through 9/11. I might remind you that if you plot the last year you will see the upward trend resulting from Bush's policies. This "by the numbers" stuff is for bumper stickers, be a better consumer of information. I might remind you that despite these setbacks, Bush has reversed the job loss trend he inherited, and home ownership is 2% higher than when he took office. Bush has created hundreds of thousands of health care jobs (that despite what Kerry would lead you to believe, are significantly higher than not just minimum wage but the mean salary in this country) but you're going to blame him for technology that leads to fewer manufacturing jobs. I'm sure you realize this is a long term historical trend, that service sector and health care jobs will increase while manufacturing jobs will be lost, or maybe we should legislate for unions to keep companies from being competitive? Yeah, that'll make a stronger economy.
Posted by: Morris at September 6, 2004 12:57 AM | PERMALINKMorris,
I'm not sure I understand your logic. I'll agree that the economy does not move quickly, and does in deed take months to turn. However, Bush inherited this economy 43 months ago. How long do we need to give him? The present numbers are not great (144,000 jobs created in August, which is below the number needed just to match the number of new people entering the job market), and his past numbers are even worse. Roosevelt created more new jobs during the Great Depression (1932 - 1936 term) than Bush has during just a moderate recession and slumping recovery. As for home ownership: it should be higher - these are the lowest mortgage rates in 40 years (just for the record, we are also experiencing the highest rate of bankruptcies and foreclosures, as well). And give me a cite for the "hundreds of thousands of health care jobs" created under Bush.
Bush is clearly weak on the economy. You may believe his strengths in other areas make up the difference, but you cannot win on this.
Posted by: Baltar at September 6, 2004 09:29 AM | PERMALINKDo you hold Bush accountable for ANYTHING Morris? Tell me. As to your health care job statistic, let's see, you don't think he's responsible for job losses, but you do think he's responsible for job gains. By your systemic reasoning I'd just assume we have more health care jobs b/c our population is aging and drugs are keeping people alive and it has nothing to do with the president's policies. I could make a similar argument re: the home ownership numbers.
But really Mo. What exactly is the astonishingly low bar that you set for the president? From your comments it sounds like you'd think it were fine if he (accidentally of course) wrecked the economy entirely as long as he was honest about following his heart. Was the economy slowing, sure it was. But that's happened many times before, and yet many of these economic numbers are of HISTORICALLY awful proportions (hence they are probably not simply the product of the systemic forces that you think shape economic numbers). You don't think he's at all at fault for the poverty numbers? For the job loss numbers? For the freaking gigantic deficit?
Basically, what do you think defines a failed presidency? How bad do things have to get exactly? Do we have to all be living in caves and scavenging for meat?
Plus your complete disinterest in weighing, you know, EVIDENCE, whether it's on 9/11 or the economy is exasperating. You seem to be saying - "Oh numbers ... well, you know you can't trust numbers, or, they don't show anything" - bullshit. They are measures for different aspects of life. These put Bush in a very bad light, and you don't think he's responsible for ANY of them 4 years into his presidency? Well, then why should he be responsible 8 years in? If it doesn't matter, let's draft Bill the Cat.
And if you don't like unions - well, fuck you Morris. Have many gone over the top? Absolutely. But 1) America wouldn't be the place it is in terms of treating most Americans equally and improving living standards, and for that matter the ability to both work and live (and you're pro-life, right) if it hadn't been for them and 2) if you honestly think unions necessarily keep companies from being competitive you should have never passed a single economics class. Go back and read ... hey you could even go back centuries and read Adam Smith. Some regulation of the market is ESSENTIAL for competitiveness. Can it get out of hand? Sure. And that must be watched. But companies unregulated poison and kill and stifle competition.
And yeah, I say again - fuck you on the unions thing. I know, you're going to say I'm not being "civil" - well, why the fuck should I be when you think it's entirely appropriate to bash organizations that saved the lives of many workers, and allowed millions more to escape poverty. If civility just serves to be polite while the presidnt drags us back into the worst of the 19th century, we should drop it.
And beyond that - you accuse ME of bumper-sticker dialogue and then say something as stupid and simplistic as that?
Posted by: Armand at September 6, 2004 10:00 AM | PERMALINKBaltar, I might remind you that Roosevelt created jobs by simply doling money out the federal budget and trying desperately to find something for all those people to do. I find it inconsistent that you complain about Bush's skyrocketing deficits but then compare him to someone who artificially inflated employment numbers through public spending.
As far as the health care sector numbers, here's the site for 2000's numbers
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/history/ocwage.11142001.news
and here's the site for may 2003 (latest available numbers) for healthcare practitioners
http://stats.bls.gov/oes/2003/may/oes290000.htm
and for healthcare support
http://stats.bls.gov/oes/2003/may/oes310000.htm
If you do the math, that's about 170,000 health care support jobs between those times and 130,000 health care practitioner jobs. And considering the overall job picture, it's likely tens (if not hundreds) of thousands more jobs have been created in the last year. There's a specific article I've read about this (I think it was AP), I'll try to find it tomorrow and get that to you.
Armand, I think you're finally beginning to understand that trends in population and technology DO have more of an effect on the economy than presidential policy. You talk about numbers, but not in an informed way. You talk about them as if they're static quantities without understanding forces of acceleration and deceleration; if Bush inherits a slowing (acceleration in a negative direction)economy, his policies have to accelerate the economy for a while until they take on a static quality, and THEN the acceleration will become obvious by better numbers. If I drop a metal ball and it accelerates towards the science lab floor, and there's a big magnet on the ceiling, it takes a stronger force to counteract the downward acceleration than would be necessary to lift the ball toward the ceiling from rest. And it takes time. Static numbers assume an economy at rest, and this is too simple a picture of a dynamic economy.
You mock the President's honesty; you'd prefer us have a president who's honest and just with other countries but lies to his own people?
Bill the Cat and John Kerry do have something in common: they both had careers wrecked (when Bill was a televangelist) when their deceptive lives came to light.
As you say, SOME regulation is necessary, but I don't see the point of giving unions the power to make our industries unable to compete, to keep our industries from the market advantages of technologies other countries use. Protecting jobs that serve no economic purpose serves no economic purpose.
If you examine your diatribe and think about it, you'd realize that without civility we go back not to the 19th century but to the dark ages. Understand that when you accuse the president of being a liar and a killer, this is just as abhorrent to what's meaningful to me as my being dismissive of unions is to you.
Posted by: Morris at September 6, 2004 04:36 PM | PERMALINKmorris, if you don't dispute the fact that the finally, meagerly positive jobs numbers in the past year fail to keep up with the growth of the workforce, then aren't you basically conceding that the slope is still negative, even if the derivative is positive (a statistical point i'll concede arguendo as against bush's first year, but not against clinton's last year without evidence, since to my knowledge the absolute numbers were good until bush's tenure)?
that's a hell of a slogan to run on: "after four years, fewer jobs lost."
or wait, are you maybe saying that the numbers are kind of good, but to the extent they're not, numbers don't matter?
sort of like, to the extent military service matters, any honor in kerry's was obviated by his "dishonorable" outspoken defense of conscience upon his return stateside; while any dishonor in bush's failure even to show up is unimportant, since he was simply blowing off steam doing whatever it is children of privilege do when they're drunk and AWOL.
puh-leeze. bush is a bad republican and a bad president. a _million_ healthcare jobs created wouldn't change that.
Posted by: joshua at September 7, 2004 09:36 AM | PERMALINKA tangential comment, and one that probably deserves its own post, but... buried in Armand's original post is an extremely alarming statement.
The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods.
The Congressional Budget Office has added fuel to our fire:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. budget deficit will balloon to $2.29 trillion over the next decade, congressional analysts said Tuesday. This represents a worse outlook than previously forecast and one likely to stir election-year debate about President Bush's economic policies.The forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office compares to its March outlook for a cumulative deficit of $2.01 trillion for the 2005-2014 period, if current economic policies stay the same.
"The outlook in terms of the deficits in 2004 and 2005 has improved, but the projection of the cumulative deficit over the 2005-2014 period has worsened," the CBO said in a summer update of its budget outlook.
CBO warned that even if the economy grows more rapidly than projected, "significant long-term strains" on the budget will get worse within the next decade as the baby-boomers begin to retire.
The report projects economic growth of 4.5 percent in 2004 and a slightly slower 4.1 percent next year.
CBO also forecasts that the federal government will reach its $7.384 trillion debt limit in October.
The U.S. Treasury has asked Congress to raise the borrowing ceiling for the third time in three years, a sensitive vote Republicans would like to avoid ahead of the election.
The same story also reports:
The CBO confirmed a preliminary forecast made in August for a record deficit of $422 billion for the 2004 fiscal year.That number compares to the White House's latest deficit outlook of $445 billion for this year and was better than earlier estimates. The White House no longer provides a 10-year deficit forecast.
CBO is expecting the deficit to decline to $348 billion in 2005, if current laws and policies do not change.
"This report underscores that our policies are working to create a stronger economy, more jobs and a lower deficit," said House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, an Iowa Republican.
Now, I am not sure that this is good news. I mean, sure, it's better that it's lower than it might be, but as Lemony Snicket says, telling yourself "at least we're not being chased by bears" only does so much good.
Posted by: binky at September 7, 2004 12:49 PM | PERMALINKHere's the article I was telling you about.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/9291663.htm
"The FactCheck data is based on the Labor Deparment's household survey, which shows employment is up 1.2 million during Bush's term in office."
Far be it for me to disuade you nabobs of negativism, but this article from CBS marketwatch suggests the economic news is better than you'd admit, that Bush won't be the first President to lose jobs in fifty years, that including the last month's and next month's numbers employment will probably be up a million and a half. Considering all the IT jobs lost when the dot com bubble burst and all the tourism jobs lost due to 9/11, that's pretty good.
Binky, I'm not sure your argument really favors Kerry because he's suggesting spending more money, though as of this week as opposed to a year ago he wants to spend less on Iraq. Yes, it's true he does want to tax more. Bully for him.
Posted by: Morris at September 11, 2004 02:47 PM | PERMALINK