BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show all posts
06 January 2011
Tim Pawlenty repeats questionable statistic on growth of federal workforce from POLITIFACT 13DEZ10
A Christian deliberately using false information to inflame the electorate's disgust with government is wrong, hypocritical.....and sadly so typical of the gop and tea-baggers
Tim Pawlenty, a potential Republican presidential candidate, ran afoul of the Truth-O-Meter for a statement about the expansion of the government workforce.
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
"Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
Tim Pawlenty on Monday, December 13th, 2010 in an op-ed in the "Wall Street Journal"Tim Pawlenty repeats questionable statistic on growth of federal workforce
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Tim Pawlenty, a potential Republican presidential candidate, ran afoul of the Truth-O-Meter for a statement about the expansion of the government workforce.In the Dec. 13, 2010, edition of the Wall Street Journal, outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- a potential contender in the 2012 Republican presidential primary -- wrote a column that blasted public-employee unions. Pawlenty wrote that government employees, especially those who are unionized, have become unfairly advantaged compared to private-sector workers, through a "silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions."
"Across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt," Pawlenty wrote. He even repeated what has become a major Republican talking point -- that "federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector." (In November, we ruled a less precisely worded version of this statistic False.)
"The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or 'strong back' jobs," Pawlenty wrote. "They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming 'industry' left in our economy. Since January 2008, the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
We thought we'd take a look at one of the cornerstones of Pawlenty's column -- his contention that the private sector lost nearly 8 million jobs while government added 590,000.
To see if he was right, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates a wide range of labor and employment statistics on a monthly basis.
In January 2008, total private-sector employment in the United States stood at 115,562,000. By November 2010, the most current month available, that number had sunk to 108,278,000 -- a drop of roughly 7.3 million jobs. That pretty close to the "nearly 8 million" figure that Pawlenty cited. (Almost two-thirds of those job losses, incidentally, happened while George W. Bush was president.)
But Pawlenty's public-sector figures were problematic. The BLS has a category called government employment -- which encapsulates local, state and federal employment, just as Pawlenty had defined it. Over the same period, the number of government jobs went from 22,379,000 to 22,261,000 -- a decrease of 118,000, rather than an increase of 590,000, as Pawlenty had written.
At first we were flummoxed about how Pawlenty got the numbers so wrong. We called BLS to make sure we weren't overlooking another data set that measured the same subject, and spokesman Gary Steinberg confirmed that we were using exactly the same numbers he would use.
We also looked at federal employment trends over the same period, on the guess that Pawlenty might have meant to refer to federal jobs, rather than all government jobs. By this calculation, the number of jobs did increase, rather than decrease, but the amount was only one-sixth of what Pawlenty had indicated. Over that period, federal employment rose from 2,739,000 to 2,837,000 -- 98,000 jobs in all.
After a bit of online research, we found a reference to the mysterious 590,000 number in -- of all places -- a fact-check by our colleagues at PolitiFact Ohio.
It turns out that on Aug. 10, 2010, they analyzed a statement by Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, that "since the president became the president, we have lost 3.3 million jobs in the private sector. But you know who's done okay and who's not complaining today? The public sector. We've gained 590,000 public sector jobs."
LaTourette's number for private-sector job losses at that point was spot-on. But PolitiFact Ohio found fault with his public-sector numbers. Here's what they wrote:
"In January 2009, there were 2,803,000 federal employees. By May, there were 3,396,000 federal workers. That’s a gain of 593,000, putting LaTourette on the money. But here’s the problem. BLS makes clear, the White House makes clear, and every major news report makes clear when these numbers are released each month that the stimulus had little to do with the growth of the federal workforce. Most of it -- 559,000 new jobs from January 2009 through May – came entirely from the temporary buildup of Census workers. And many of those jobs have already disappeared. ... Exclude all the Census workers hired from January 2009 through May 2010 and total federal hiring comes to only 34,000, not the 590,000 figure that LaTourette cited."
Assuming that Pawlenty was drawing his number from the same source as LaTourette did -- and we don't know for sure, because his spokesman did not respond to an inquiry -- then the Minnesota governor has even less justification for using the 590,000 figure than his Ohio colleague. Here's why:
• When we see Pawlenty saying "since January 2008," we assume he means from January 2008 to the present. But the numbers he used appeared to be based on the change from January 2009 to May 2009.
• Pawlenty specifically wrote that his job numbers referred to "local, state and federal government" employment, but LaTourette's 590,000 only counted federal workers.
• Pawlenty's statement doesn't account for the tremendous -- and now vanished -- bump from hiring Census workers.
The closest we could come to a 590,000 job gain using a legitimate statistic was a measurement suggested by Rea Hederman Jr., a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He suggested looking at the federal workforce minus U.S. Postal Service employees. Postal workers are a different enough category of employee that the BLS does calculate a statistic that excludes them from the federal workforce, and that statistic shows an increase in federal employment since January 2008 of 215,700 employees. But that's still barely one-third of the total Pawlenty cited, and to get to it, you still have to directly contradict the definition of government workers that Pawlenty used in his column.
The question of whether government employees, because of public-employee unions, are compensated too generously or enjoy too much job security strikes us as a fair topic for debate. But Pawlenty did his cause no service by using the 590,000-employee statistic.
Not only did he apparently mangle the time frame, contradict his own definition of federal workers and fail to acknowledge the huge caveat of Census worker hiring, he also repeated a statistic that had been criticized as inaccurate as long as six months ago. (Another politician who got caught by PolitiFact Ohio was the incoming House Speaker, John Boehner, R-Ohio.) And in the context of his column, the job numbers comment was more than a throwaway line. The comparison of job growth he made -- which showed the size of the federal workforce going in exactly the opposite direction as it did in reality -- is a key pillar supporting the premise of his column, that government work is "the only booming 'industry' left in our economy." Pawlenty's number is so compromised that we rate his statement Pants on Fire!
UPDATE: After we posted our story, a spokesman for Pawlenty, Alex Conant, contacted PolitiFact to report that the source for Pawlenty's 590,000-job figure was a June 24, 2010, post by Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, on the Big Government site run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. After looking at what de Rugy wrote, we stand by our analysis that the 590,000 number doesn't encapsulate the time frame or definition set out by Pawlenty in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, and that it is still skewed by a large bump in temporary Census jobs.
Subjects: Federal Budget, Workers
Sources:
Tim Pawlenty, "Government Unions vs. Taxpayers" (Wall Street Journal op-ed), Dec. 13, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, main search index for "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, search form for full database of "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "Rep. Steve LaTourette says that the stimulus has done little for private jobs while the federal workforce is booming," Aug. 18, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "John Boehner says Obama has presided over private job losses, increase in federal jobs," July 15, 2010
Interview with Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Wayne Vroman, senior fellow with the Urban Institute, Dec. 16, 2010
E-mail interview with Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Rea Hederman Jr., research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Dec. 15, 2010
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
"Across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt," Pawlenty wrote. He even repeated what has become a major Republican talking point -- that "federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector." (In November, we ruled a less precisely worded version of this statistic False.)
"The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or 'strong back' jobs," Pawlenty wrote. "They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming 'industry' left in our economy. Since January 2008, the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."
We thought we'd take a look at one of the cornerstones of Pawlenty's column -- his contention that the private sector lost nearly 8 million jobs while government added 590,000.
To see if he was right, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates a wide range of labor and employment statistics on a monthly basis.
In January 2008, total private-sector employment in the United States stood at 115,562,000. By November 2010, the most current month available, that number had sunk to 108,278,000 -- a drop of roughly 7.3 million jobs. That pretty close to the "nearly 8 million" figure that Pawlenty cited. (Almost two-thirds of those job losses, incidentally, happened while George W. Bush was president.)
But Pawlenty's public-sector figures were problematic. The BLS has a category called government employment -- which encapsulates local, state and federal employment, just as Pawlenty had defined it. Over the same period, the number of government jobs went from 22,379,000 to 22,261,000 -- a decrease of 118,000, rather than an increase of 590,000, as Pawlenty had written.
At first we were flummoxed about how Pawlenty got the numbers so wrong. We called BLS to make sure we weren't overlooking another data set that measured the same subject, and spokesman Gary Steinberg confirmed that we were using exactly the same numbers he would use.
We also looked at federal employment trends over the same period, on the guess that Pawlenty might have meant to refer to federal jobs, rather than all government jobs. By this calculation, the number of jobs did increase, rather than decrease, but the amount was only one-sixth of what Pawlenty had indicated. Over that period, federal employment rose from 2,739,000 to 2,837,000 -- 98,000 jobs in all.
After a bit of online research, we found a reference to the mysterious 590,000 number in -- of all places -- a fact-check by our colleagues at PolitiFact Ohio.
It turns out that on Aug. 10, 2010, they analyzed a statement by Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, that "since the president became the president, we have lost 3.3 million jobs in the private sector. But you know who's done okay and who's not complaining today? The public sector. We've gained 590,000 public sector jobs."
LaTourette's number for private-sector job losses at that point was spot-on. But PolitiFact Ohio found fault with his public-sector numbers. Here's what they wrote:
"In January 2009, there were 2,803,000 federal employees. By May, there were 3,396,000 federal workers. That’s a gain of 593,000, putting LaTourette on the money. But here’s the problem. BLS makes clear, the White House makes clear, and every major news report makes clear when these numbers are released each month that the stimulus had little to do with the growth of the federal workforce. Most of it -- 559,000 new jobs from January 2009 through May – came entirely from the temporary buildup of Census workers. And many of those jobs have already disappeared. ... Exclude all the Census workers hired from January 2009 through May 2010 and total federal hiring comes to only 34,000, not the 590,000 figure that LaTourette cited."
Assuming that Pawlenty was drawing his number from the same source as LaTourette did -- and we don't know for sure, because his spokesman did not respond to an inquiry -- then the Minnesota governor has even less justification for using the 590,000 figure than his Ohio colleague. Here's why:
• When we see Pawlenty saying "since January 2008," we assume he means from January 2008 to the present. But the numbers he used appeared to be based on the change from January 2009 to May 2009.
• Pawlenty specifically wrote that his job numbers referred to "local, state and federal government" employment, but LaTourette's 590,000 only counted federal workers.
• Pawlenty's statement doesn't account for the tremendous -- and now vanished -- bump from hiring Census workers.
The closest we could come to a 590,000 job gain using a legitimate statistic was a measurement suggested by Rea Hederman Jr., a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He suggested looking at the federal workforce minus U.S. Postal Service employees. Postal workers are a different enough category of employee that the BLS does calculate a statistic that excludes them from the federal workforce, and that statistic shows an increase in federal employment since January 2008 of 215,700 employees. But that's still barely one-third of the total Pawlenty cited, and to get to it, you still have to directly contradict the definition of government workers that Pawlenty used in his column.
The question of whether government employees, because of public-employee unions, are compensated too generously or enjoy too much job security strikes us as a fair topic for debate. But Pawlenty did his cause no service by using the 590,000-employee statistic.
Not only did he apparently mangle the time frame, contradict his own definition of federal workers and fail to acknowledge the huge caveat of Census worker hiring, he also repeated a statistic that had been criticized as inaccurate as long as six months ago. (Another politician who got caught by PolitiFact Ohio was the incoming House Speaker, John Boehner, R-Ohio.) And in the context of his column, the job numbers comment was more than a throwaway line. The comparison of job growth he made -- which showed the size of the federal workforce going in exactly the opposite direction as it did in reality -- is a key pillar supporting the premise of his column, that government work is "the only booming 'industry' left in our economy." Pawlenty's number is so compromised that we rate his statement Pants on Fire!
UPDATE: After we posted our story, a spokesman for Pawlenty, Alex Conant, contacted PolitiFact to report that the source for Pawlenty's 590,000-job figure was a June 24, 2010, post by Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, on the Big Government site run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. After looking at what de Rugy wrote, we stand by our analysis that the 590,000 number doesn't encapsulate the time frame or definition set out by Pawlenty in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, and that it is still skewed by a large bump in temporary Census jobs.
About this statement:
Published: Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 11:28 a.m.Subjects: Federal Budget, Workers
Sources:
Tim Pawlenty, "Government Unions vs. Taxpayers" (Wall Street Journal op-ed), Dec. 13, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, main search index for "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
Bureau of Labor Statistics, search form for full database of "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)," accessed Dec. 15, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "Rep. Steve LaTourette says that the stimulus has done little for private jobs while the federal workforce is booming," Aug. 18, 2010
PolitiFact Ohio, "John Boehner says Obama has presided over private job losses, increase in federal jobs," July 15, 2010
Interview with Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Wayne Vroman, senior fellow with the Urban Institute, Dec. 16, 2010
E-mail interview with Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Dec. 15, 2010
E-mail interview with Rea Hederman Jr., research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Dec. 15, 2010
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
11 November 2010
The Bush Tax Cuts and the Republican Cult of Economic Failure 10NOV10
SURE to cause rage in the representative and senate offices of republicorp on Capital Hill as well as in the brothels (lobbyist offices) on K Street, this from HuffPost addresses the question I have asked in several post on this blog....where is the proof the bush tax cuts for the rich have created any jobs during the two years of this recession? See the call to action from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to participate in the petition to President Obama telling him not to cave into the greed of the gop, the tea-baggers and their wealthy masters....
There's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as an honest case for extending the Bush tax cuts. Ten years of hard data prove they were a complete failure. They did not work while Bush was in office and they did not work during the first two years of the Obama administration. No wonder the Congressional Budget Office says that the GOP's proposed extension of tax cuts to the rich will reduce future economic growth.
To recap:
In terms of promoting economic growth, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
Under George W. Bush, U.S. GDP growth averaged about 2.1 percent a year. Since the end of World War II, the country has never experienced such low economic growth during an eight-year period. And if you exclude the war demobilization of 1946, when U.S. government spending fell by two-thirds and the GDP fell by 10.9 percent, Bush had the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover. During FDR's first two terms, when the country remained mired in a Depression, GDP growth averaged about 6.3 percent a year.
There is no way to make Bush's performance look good. Even if you cherry-pick the data, by excluding fiscal year 2008, when GDP growth was zero, economic expansion was anemic. During Bush's first seven years, it averaged about 2.4 percent, the worst rate in half a century. And what was the source of most of that economic growth? Homeowner equity extraction. Bush could point to one sector where growth outpaced that of all prior administrations: Residential mortgage debt. It almost doubled, from $5.1 trillion to $9.8 trillion, between 2001 and 2006.
Average Annual GDP Growth
Bush 2001-2008: 2.1%
Clinton 1993-2000: 3.9%
Reagan/Bush I 1981 - 1992: 3.0%
Carter 1977 - 1980: 3.2%
Nixon/Ford 1969 - 1976: 2.8%
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 - 1968: 4.8%
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
Of course, these numbers understate the magnitude of Bush's failure, since the full effects of the 2008 financial meltdown were not felt until 2009 and later. Though Bush has left the White House, his tax cuts have remained in place. What's completely missing is any evidence that his tax cuts did anything to boost the economy.
After Clinton raised taxes on the rich, GDP growth spiked. His eight-year average was about 3.9 percent, close to twice what it was under Bush.
In terms of promoting job growth, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
By the end of eight years of George W. Bush's economic stewardship, 1.1 million jobs had been added to the economy. Measured against any of his predecessors, Bush was a complete failure. Clinton added 22 times as many jobs. Reagan added 16 times as many jobs. Eisenhower added three times as many jobs, when the U.S. economy was a fraction of its current size.
Even prior to the financial meltdown, Bush's record of job creation was dismal. The economy started hemorrhaging jobs in June 2008, but from the end of January 2001 through May 2008, the U.S. economy created five million jobs. That's less than 700 thousand jobs a year, the worst performance, over a seven-year stretch, since the early 1960s.
Number of Jobs Added [millions]
Bush, Feb. 2001- Jan. 2009: 1.1
Clinton, Feb. 1993- Jan. 2001: 22.7
Reagan/Bush, I Feb. 1981- Jan. 1993: 18.7
Carter, Feb. 1976- Jan. 1981:10.3
Nixon/Ford, Feb. 1969- Jan. 1976: 11.3
Kennedy/Johnson, Feb. 1961- Jan. 1969: 15.7
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Seasonally Adjusted Nonfarm Payrolls
Of course the job losses that began in 2008 accelerated into 2009 and onward. You can ascribe the blame to Bush or to Obama. But you can't point to any evidence that the Bush tax cuts actually added jobs in the past two years. The reasons are obvious to anyone who understands how companies make their hiring decisions. They hire because they expect their business volume to grow, or because the current workforce cannot handle the tasks at hand. Does anyone really think that a small business owner who nets more than $1 million a year -- say, a plastic surgeon, or a hedge-fund manager, or (Justin) Bieber Time Touring LLC -- would hire more employees simply because the tax rates were slashed after the end of the Clinton Administration?
By the way, the Clinton administration created about three million more jobs than the administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II combined.
In terms of fiscal prudence, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
Guess what happened after the U.S. economy came out of a mild recession that ended in November 2001? U.S. tax revenues plummeted. They plummeted at a rate that was unprecedented since the demobilization after World War II. And they plummeted during a time when Bush initiated a war that would leave us mired in Iraq for more than seven years.
Historically, U.S. income tax revenues have always grown, year after year. The problem was that government expenditures always grew more. So when revenues started falling, the relationship, between what the government took in and what it spent, really got out of whack.
Source: OMB
Government revenues fell three years in a row, well past the end of the last recession, while government outlays increased at twice the rate seen under the Clinton administration. Again, Bush set a record for modern times. We also know that the burst of revenues from 2005 onward was traceable to asset bubbles, which were not sustainable. In the last budget he submitted to Congress, Bush assumed that the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2009 would be zero.
Bush's failure was masked by a sleazy accounting trick that Bill Clinton had tried to stop in 1999, when the government's operations approached break-even.
The Social Security surplus is supposed to be invested in Treasuries, which generate compound interest to build up a nest egg for the day when baby boomers start retiring. Of course a real Treasury instrument is a legal promise to pay. So Bush took the cash paid out by you, me and our employers into the Social Security "Trust Fund" and used it to reduce his current operating deficits. Instead of exchanging the cash for real Treasuries, the Trust Fund bought "Special Treasuries," which the government can change at will. USA Today said it best:
Source: OMB
Social Security was funded by you, me and our employers. Bush took the surplus funds and used them to subsidize his failed tax policies. The Trust Fund's liabilities are unfunded for one reason and one reason only: Bush, more than any other President, defunded them. Because Republican politicians can't handle the truth, they cry out, "Class warfare!" But all their screaming cannot alter the immutable rules of simple arithmetic. Now they want to double down on their past failures.
Take a deep breath. The Huffington Post and CNN reported this morning that President Obama is ready to cave again to Republicans -- this time on the Bush tax cuts he campaigned against in 2008.
As Republicans boast that their #1 priority is to defeat Obama in 2012, we've seen nothing but capitulation and talk of "compromise" from the President since Election Day.
It's time for us to ask: President Obama, ARE YOU KIDDING? Fight the Republicans already!
Sign our petition telling President Obama that Americans want him to fight the Bush tax cuts for millionaires -- and that Democrats will keep losing if he keeps caving. Click here.
I'll be on MSNBC's Ed Show tonight at 6:15pm EST -- and will announce the progress of our petition. The White House and Democratic leaders will be watching. So please sign now.
Make no mistake, this petition is a rallying cry.
Our days of "trusting" that Democratic leaders have some brilliant plan are over. We saw the results last Tuesday when many Obama voters were not inspired enough to return to the polls.
Progressives need to push Democratic leaders to fight for popular progressive change -- and win.
Sign the petition telling Obama to fight the Bush tax cuts here -- then, pass this to as many progressive friends as you can think of.
Working together, we'll push and push Democratic leaders until they finally fight for "change we can believe in."
Thanks for being a bold progressive.
-- Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Forrest Brown, Michael Snook, and the PCCC team
Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. We've received over 60,246 small-dollar donations. Can you help us hit 65,000?
There's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as an honest case for extending the Bush tax cuts. Ten years of hard data prove they were a complete failure. They did not work while Bush was in office and they did not work during the first two years of the Obama administration. No wonder the Congressional Budget Office says that the GOP's proposed extension of tax cuts to the rich will reduce future economic growth.
To recap:
In terms of promoting economic growth, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
Under George W. Bush, U.S. GDP growth averaged about 2.1 percent a year. Since the end of World War II, the country has never experienced such low economic growth during an eight-year period. And if you exclude the war demobilization of 1946, when U.S. government spending fell by two-thirds and the GDP fell by 10.9 percent, Bush had the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover. During FDR's first two terms, when the country remained mired in a Depression, GDP growth averaged about 6.3 percent a year.
There is no way to make Bush's performance look good. Even if you cherry-pick the data, by excluding fiscal year 2008, when GDP growth was zero, economic expansion was anemic. During Bush's first seven years, it averaged about 2.4 percent, the worst rate in half a century. And what was the source of most of that economic growth? Homeowner equity extraction. Bush could point to one sector where growth outpaced that of all prior administrations: Residential mortgage debt. It almost doubled, from $5.1 trillion to $9.8 trillion, between 2001 and 2006.
Average Annual GDP Growth
Bush 2001-2008: 2.1%
Clinton 1993-2000: 3.9%
Reagan/Bush I 1981 - 1992: 3.0%
Carter 1977 - 1980: 3.2%
Nixon/Ford 1969 - 1976: 2.8%
Kennedy/Johnson 1961 - 1968: 4.8%
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
Of course, these numbers understate the magnitude of Bush's failure, since the full effects of the 2008 financial meltdown were not felt until 2009 and later. Though Bush has left the White House, his tax cuts have remained in place. What's completely missing is any evidence that his tax cuts did anything to boost the economy.
After Clinton raised taxes on the rich, GDP growth spiked. His eight-year average was about 3.9 percent, close to twice what it was under Bush.
In terms of promoting job growth, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
By the end of eight years of George W. Bush's economic stewardship, 1.1 million jobs had been added to the economy. Measured against any of his predecessors, Bush was a complete failure. Clinton added 22 times as many jobs. Reagan added 16 times as many jobs. Eisenhower added three times as many jobs, when the U.S. economy was a fraction of its current size.
Even prior to the financial meltdown, Bush's record of job creation was dismal. The economy started hemorrhaging jobs in June 2008, but from the end of January 2001 through May 2008, the U.S. economy created five million jobs. That's less than 700 thousand jobs a year, the worst performance, over a seven-year stretch, since the early 1960s.
Number of Jobs Added [millions]
Bush, Feb. 2001- Jan. 2009: 1.1
Clinton, Feb. 1993- Jan. 2001: 22.7
Reagan/Bush, I Feb. 1981- Jan. 1993: 18.7
Carter, Feb. 1976- Jan. 1981:10.3
Nixon/Ford, Feb. 1969- Jan. 1976: 11.3
Kennedy/Johnson, Feb. 1961- Jan. 1969: 15.7
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Seasonally Adjusted Nonfarm Payrolls
Of course the job losses that began in 2008 accelerated into 2009 and onward. You can ascribe the blame to Bush or to Obama. But you can't point to any evidence that the Bush tax cuts actually added jobs in the past two years. The reasons are obvious to anyone who understands how companies make their hiring decisions. They hire because they expect their business volume to grow, or because the current workforce cannot handle the tasks at hand. Does anyone really think that a small business owner who nets more than $1 million a year -- say, a plastic surgeon, or a hedge-fund manager, or (Justin) Bieber Time Touring LLC -- would hire more employees simply because the tax rates were slashed after the end of the Clinton Administration?
By the way, the Clinton administration created about three million more jobs than the administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II combined.
In terms of fiscal prudence, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
Guess what happened after the U.S. economy came out of a mild recession that ended in November 2001? U.S. tax revenues plummeted. They plummeted at a rate that was unprecedented since the demobilization after World War II. And they plummeted during a time when Bush initiated a war that would leave us mired in Iraq for more than seven years.
Historically, U.S. income tax revenues have always grown, year after year. The problem was that government expenditures always grew more. So when revenues started falling, the relationship, between what the government took in and what it spent, really got out of whack.
Source: OMB
Government revenues fell three years in a row, well past the end of the last recession, while government outlays increased at twice the rate seen under the Clinton administration. Again, Bush set a record for modern times. We also know that the burst of revenues from 2005 onward was traceable to asset bubbles, which were not sustainable. In the last budget he submitted to Congress, Bush assumed that the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2009 would be zero.
Bush's failure was masked by a sleazy accounting trick that Bill Clinton had tried to stop in 1999, when the government's operations approached break-even.
The Social Security surplus is supposed to be invested in Treasuries, which generate compound interest to build up a nest egg for the day when baby boomers start retiring. Of course a real Treasury instrument is a legal promise to pay. So Bush took the cash paid out by you, me and our employers into the Social Security "Trust Fund" and used it to reduce his current operating deficits. Instead of exchanging the cash for real Treasuries, the Trust Fund bought "Special Treasuries," which the government can change at will. USA Today said it best:
The Bush administration opposes including Social Security and Medicare in the audited deficit. Its reason: Congress can cancel or cut the retirement programs at any time, so they should not be considered a government liability for accounting purposes.Scam artists like Mitch McConnell justify their talk about "reforming" Social Security by pointing to "unfunded liabilities." This nonsense about unfunded obligations is one of the biggest frauds of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Source: OMB
Social Security was funded by you, me and our employers. Bush took the surplus funds and used them to subsidize his failed tax policies. The Trust Fund's liabilities are unfunded for one reason and one reason only: Bush, more than any other President, defunded them. Because Republican politicians can't handle the truth, they cry out, "Class warfare!" But all their screaming cannot alter the immutable rules of simple arithmetic. Now they want to double down on their past failures.
SERIOUSLY??  |
As Republicans boast that their #1 priority is to defeat Obama in 2012, we've seen nothing but capitulation and talk of "compromise" from the President since Election Day.
It's time for us to ask: President Obama, ARE YOU KIDDING? Fight the Republicans already!
Sign our petition telling President Obama that Americans want him to fight the Bush tax cuts for millionaires -- and that Democrats will keep losing if he keeps caving. Click here.
I'll be on MSNBC's Ed Show tonight at 6:15pm EST -- and will announce the progress of our petition. The White House and Democratic leaders will be watching. So please sign now.
Make no mistake, this petition is a rallying cry.
Our days of "trusting" that Democratic leaders have some brilliant plan are over. We saw the results last Tuesday when many Obama voters were not inspired enough to return to the polls.
Progressives need to push Democratic leaders to fight for popular progressive change -- and win.
Sign the petition telling Obama to fight the Bush tax cuts here -- then, pass this to as many progressive friends as you can think of.
Working together, we'll push and push Democratic leaders until they finally fight for "change we can believe in."
Thanks for being a bold progressive.
-- Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Forrest Brown, Michael Snook, and the PCCC team
Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. We've received over 60,246 small-dollar donations. Can you help us hit 65,000?
Paid for by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee PAC (www.BoldProgressives.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions to the PCCC are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
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