The Bush Economy: Archive
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The
Comptroller General of the U.S. Speaks Out
Our nation's long-term fiscal outlook is seriously
out of balance due primarily to known demographic and health care costs.
At the same time ,
there are a variety of government policies,
programs and operations now in place and others that are being
considered that serve to build in costs for the future. Unfortunately ,
these costs are often not adequately recognized
and properly considered when key decisions are made.
While additional economic growth can help, our
long-range fiscal gap is too great to simply grow our way out of this
major challenge.
Hence, the American people need to be engaged in a
discussion about what they want government to do and how much they are
willing to pay for it.
David M. Walker, Comptroller General of
the United States and head of the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO),
9/4/03
I'ld Like to Thank You,
Herbert Hoover
George W.
The
2.7 million jobs lost in the private sector in less than three years is
one of the worst slides in decades. "There are better days ahead," Mr.
Bush told union workers on Labor Day, in a choice of language that
eerily echoes Herbert Hoover. The nation should not forget the
president's earlier insistent prescription: in selling his tax cuts in
the Republican Congress, Mr. Bush proclaimed them as just the economic
"jobs and growth" package workers needed. But the unemployment problem
remains rock-hard in resisting the administration's trickle-down fantasy
that cuts for the affluent will generate new jobs for the working class. NY Times Editorial, 9/3/3
Bush Friends
$8,900,000,000,
the California
Independent System Operator — which operates the power grid — estimated
that withholding by electricity companies had cost the state $8.9
billion [not including] the continuing cost of long-term contracts. . .
Yet the charges energy companies agreed to added up to only a bit more
than $1 million. That is, the average Californian was bilked of more
than $250, but the state will receive compensation of about 3 cents.
Was the fix
in? . . .FERC clearly does have the power to abrogate long-term
contracts signed during the crisis. But in June, on a 2-to-1 vote (yes,
two Republicans against one Democrat), the commission upheld those
contracts. So California, the victim of one of the worst abuses of
market power since the robber baron era, will get no redress.
Paul Krugman, NY Times
9/2/03
Desperate Workers
*
Today
white-collar jobs -- telemarketing, accounting, claims adjusting, home
loan processing, architectural practices, radiographers and even some
state and local government jobs -- are going offshore. In a survey of
the world's 100 largest financial services firms, Deloitte Research
found that these companies expect to shift $356 billion worth of
operations and about 2 million jobs to low-wage countries over the next
five years. These developments appear already to be affecting wages in
some sectors. According to Sharon Marsh Roberts of the Independent
Computer Consultants Association, outsourcing has forced down hourly
wage rates by 10 percent to 40 percent for many U.S. computer
consultants.
Bruce Raynor, Washington Post 9/1/03
Bush Loses 2.7 M Industrial Jobs *
The economy is
getting better, so the experts say. But this is anything but a joyful
Labor Day for the 9 million Americans without jobs or for the businesses
that once employed many of them. As the union-backed Economic Policy
Institute pointed out in a report last week, "in terms of employment
growth, the current recovery is the worst on record since the Bureau of
Labor Statistics began tracking employment in 1939."
Instead of the job picture improving as economic activity
has accelerated, more than 1 million jobs have disappeared since the
recession officially ended. . . .From July 2000 until last month,
industrial jobs fell from 17.3 million to 14.6 million -- a loss of
almost one job in six. And these were, for the most part, good jobs,
averaging $54,000 a year.
David Broder, Washington Post
8/31/03
Deception by Bush Protégée
California's
taxes are highly inequitable: thanks to Proposition 13, some people pay
ridiculously low property taxes. Warren Buffett, supposedly acting as
Mr. Schwarzenegger's economic adviser, offered the perfect example: he
pays $14,401 in property taxes on his $500,000 home in Omaha, but only
$2,264 on his $4 million home in Orange County. But the candidate
quickly made it clear that Mr. Buffett should stick to the script and
not mention inconvenient facts. . .the candidate says he won't touch
education. Sharp cuts in medical spending would be not only cruel but
foolish, since in many cases they would mean losing federal matching
funds. And prison spending is largely determined by the state's "three
strikes" law. In short, he's not leveling with voters: there's no way to
balance the budget while honoring all his promises.
Krugman, NY Times 8/22/03
Bushconomics
Mr. Akerlof, a
2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that "the
Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years. . .
.Within 10 years, we're going to pay a serious price for such
irresponsibility."
. . . Robert
Solow, an economist and professor emeritus at M.I.T. who is also a Nobel
laureate. He assailed the Bush tax cuts as "redistributive in intent and
redistributive in effect.. . .
" "Homelessness
in major cities is escalating," the article said, "as more laid-off
workers already living paycheck to paycheck wind up on the streets or in
shelters."
" The
federal tax cut, which slashed the tax rate on dividends and prompted
many companies to increase their payouts, is proving to be a boon for
some corporate executives who are reaping millions in after-tax gains."
BOB HERBERT, NY Times 8/14/03
Support for Corporate Friends, Not Our Troops
Military
privatization, like military penny-pinching, is part of a pattern. Both
for ideological reasons and, one suspects, because of the patronage
involved, the people now running the country seem determined to have
public services provided by private corporations, no matter what the
circumstances. For example, you may recall that in the weeks after 9/11
the Bush administration [fought]to leave airport screening in the hands
of private security companies, . . . The Baltimore Sun, "the Bush
administration continues to use American corporations to perform work
that United Nations agencies and nonprofit aid groups can do more
cheaply." In short, the logistical mess in Iraq isn't an isolated
case of poor planning and mismanagement: it's telling us what's wrong
with our current philosophy of government. PAUL
KRUGMAN, NY Times, 8/12/03
Bush
Push for Fewer U.S. Jobs
. .
.the interests
of the Bush admin-istration's primary constituency, corporate America,
do not coincide with the fundamental interests of workaday Americans. On
the business side of this divide, increased profits are realized by
showing the door to as many workers as possible, and squeezing the
remainder to the bursting point. Productivity (based primarily on
improvements in technology) is way up. Hiring, of course, is down.
Part-time and temporary workers are in; full-time workers with benefits
are out. And then there's the ominous trend of sending
higher-skilled jobs overseas to low-wage places like India and China, an
upscale reprise of the sweatshop phenomenon that erased so many U.S.
manufacturing jobs over the past quarter century
Herbert, NY Times 8/7/03
Graph of Bush Jobs Record
Corporatism by Another Name:
I keep
thinking of Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Fascism should more
properly be called ‘corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government
and corporate power." When was the last time we saw this administration
do something that involved standing up to some corporate special
interest in favor of the great majority of the people?
Molly
Ivans, Washington Post, Working for Change 8/8/03
Even the IMF
Speaks Out on Bush Budget
The swelling budget deficit,
projected by the White House to reach a record $455 billion this fiscal
year, ``will make it even more difficult to cope with the aging of the
baby-boom generation, and will eventually crowd out investment and erode
U.S. productivity growth,'' the [International Monetary Fund] IMF said.
The IMF's
board of directors, which issued the report, urged the U.S. to return to
a balanced budget within five to 10 years and take steps to strengthen
Social Security and Medicare. Any measures to increase Medicare benefits
should consider the impact on the system's ``longer-term financial
problems.''
Bloomberg, 8/5/03
Defense Budget or Pocket
Stuffer?
the
combined defense budgets of the . . .axis of evil made up of Iran, Iraq,
and N. Korea – are less than $12 billion, or only about three per cent
of the US proposed defense budget for 2003
Chuck Spiney, THE Subcommittee on National Security, 6/4/02
Irr esponsible
Leadership:
Outside the
Social Security system, the federal government is now running a deficit
equal to a third of its spending — worse than California. The
administration says it will never, ever contemplate increasing taxes; it
says it will narrow the deficit through spending restraint, but has
never said what spending it intends to restrain. . . . But the people
now running the country are every bit as irresponsible as those blocking
a serious response to California's crisis. And sooner or later that
irresponsibility will have the usual consequences. California, here we
come Krugman,
NY Times
8/1/03
Entitlements: The Needy vs. The Corporations -- he
asserted purpose of the recent corporate “stimulus” bills seems sadly
misdirected. For the past few years, our economy has faced serious
excess capacity: businesses can make more products than consumers want
to buy. Oddly, Congress and President Bush concluded that rather than
trying to boost demand, the answer to the over-capacity problem was to
try to encourage even more over-capacity. Not surprisingly, this
nonsensical strategy hasn’t worked.
Testimony of Robert S. McIntyre, Director, Citizens for Tax Justice
Before the Committee on the Budget
Cost of the War in Iraq as of 9 p.m. eastern time 7/25/03:
$70.3 Billion
Instead of using it on a non-existent "immanent
threat" to the U.S., it could have paid for:
9,943,632
children in Head Start per year
30,146,313 children could have health care per
year
1,339,645 teachers could be hired per year
1,783,928 four-year university scholarships
17,582,857 cars converted to use natural gas
1,004,735 affordable housing units could
be built
See an update of these figures at
www.costofwar.com
Another Bush Quote:
There's
another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't
true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our
problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other
generations." . . .Of the 2.6 million jobs the economy has lost under
the Bush administration, 2 million have been lost since the 2001 tax
cut.. . .Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger, as a
share of G.D.P., than those that plunged Argentina into crisis
Krugman , NY Times 7/18/03
No More Overtime Pay
for Millions: new rules would let employers stop paying
overtime to workers including licensed practical nurses, paralegals,
chefs, editors and dental hygienists — though it would not affect those
covered by union contracts.
ASSOCIATED PRESS on MSNBC 7/11/03
Compassionate Conservatism:
As Mr. Bush moves from fund-raiser
to fund-raiser, building the mother of all campaign stockpiles, states
from coast to coast are reaching depths of budget desperation unseen
since the Great Depression. The disconnect here is becoming surreal. On
Thursday the National Governors Association let it be known that the
fiscal crisis that has crippled one state after another is worsening,
not getting better.
. . . Some Americans are missing meals and going without their medicine,
while others are enjoying a surge in already breathtaking levels of
wealth. So what are we doing? We're cutting aid to the former while
showering government largess on the latter.
Herbert, NY Times
6/30/03
Clever Investment: FCC
Chairman Michael Powell runs . . .
t he
Telecommunications Development Fund was created by Congress in 1996 to
kick-start small communications firms in hopes of spurring innovation
and competition. Instead, the six-year-old fund has paid more than $7
million in executive salaries and other expenses while investing only
$9.4 million of seed money in start-ups.
Bob Williams, Center for Public Integrity
6/18/03
The Bush Machine:
Mr. Confessore
suggests that we may be heading for a replay of the McKinley era, in
which the nation was governed by and for big business. I think he's
actually understating his case: like Mr. DeLay, Republican leaders often
talk of "revolution," and we should take them at their word. . . .But
it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a
foregone conclusion.
Krugman, NY Times 6/27-03
“
The
President has given numerous speeches implying that most people stand to
gain $1,000 or more from his latest tax bill, but that’s not true,” said
Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. “In fact, over
the next two years, the median tax reduction will be only about $120.
After 2004, the median tax cut drops to zero.”
Citizens for Tax
Justice 5/30/2003
" Citing
data from a study by Citizens for Tax Justice, Mr. Rosenbaum pointed out
that the richest 1 percent of Americans will get an average tax
reduction of nearly $100,000 a year, while "the tax relief most people
will receive is quite meager." Half of all taxpayers will get a
cut of less than $100 this year. By 2005, three-quarters will get less
than $100. "
Herbert, NY Times 6/23/03
"the banana-republic policies now being followed
in Washington won't just drive up interest rates; they'll probably
generate a full-blown fiscal crisis one of these years. That can't be
good for equity prices. In short, the current surge in stocks
looks like another bubble, one that will eventually" burst. Krugman, NY
Times, 6/20/03
"The ranking Democrat announced that he would
introduce an amendment adding roughly $1 billion for areas like port
security and border security that, according to just about every expert,
have been severely neglected since Sept. 11. He proposed to pay for the
additions by slightly scaling back tax cuts for people making more than
$1 million per year.
The subcommittee's
chairman promptly closed the meeting to the public, citing national
security — though no classified material was under discussion. And the
bill that emerged from the closed meeting did not contain the extra
funding."
MORE
Krugman, NY Times 6/17/03
"The Bush cuts
offer too little short-term stimulus while choking the long-term revenue
flow for the looming time when Social Security and Medicare costs will
balloon. Mr. Bush's growing need to float the federal government on
borrowed money will crimp economic growth. This is the stuff of real
debate. Instead we have the G.O.P. worrying a modest share for the poor.
The outcome promises to position the president as a compassionate
"moderate" in a cynical bit of right-wing theater produced by the House
majority leader, Tom DeLay, the president's indispensable ally in budget
politicking."
NY Times Editorial 6/15/03
The latest
budget projections from the Congressional Budget Office indicate that
one out of every three dollars the federal government spends this year
outside of the self-funded Social Security system will be paid for by
borrowing. This will be the highest share of deficit-financed spending
since World War II.
Citizen's for Tax Justice, 6/11/03
"Whenever Mr. Bush says, "It's not the government's money, it's your
money," Democrats should point out that what he is really saying is,
"It's not the government's services, it's your services" — and thanks to
the Bush tax cuts, soon you'll be paying for many of them yourself. .
.that will mean less health care and kindergarten for children and the
poor, higher state college tuition, smaller local school budgets and
fewer state service workers. And Lord only knows how we'll finance
Social Security."
MORE
Friedman, NY Times, 6/11/02
"Governor Riley (R. Al.) has stunned many of his conservative
supporters, and enraged the state's powerful farm and timber lobbies, by
pushing a tax reform plan through the Alabama Legislature that shifts a
significant amount of the state's tax burden from the poor to wealthy
individuals and corporations. And he has framed the issue in starkly
moral terms, arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates
biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from oppressing the
poor."
Adam Cohen, NY Times
MORE
"We will be paying for his tax cuts with borrowed funds, money borrowed
from our children and grandchildren who will be forced to foot the bill.
And, according to reports, the Bush administration intends to ask for
more tax cuts next year. The effect of these tax cuts will be enduring
-- and enormously damaging"
Sen. Jim Jeffords at the National Press Club on June 5,
"federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare
and Medicaid didn't exist, and Social Security was still a minor
expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential
to scores of millions of Americans, at today's tax rates? We can't."
Krugman, NY Times 6/6/03
"Three successive tax cuts pushed by President
Bush will leave middle-income taxpayers paying a greater share of all
federal taxes by the end of the decade, according to new analyses of the
Bush administration's tax policies." Dana
Milbank and Jonathan Weisman,
Washington Post 6/4/03
"nobody trying to jumpstart the economy would
begin with dividend taxes. . . . Mr Bush looks set to go into the next
election having overseen at least 1m net job losses."
The Economist, May 29th 2003
"The
tax cut plan . . . offers the wealthiest one percent of Americans a
$103,899 tax reduction over the next four years. At the same time, the
final bill sharply scales back the already modest middle-income tax cuts
included in earlier bills, by phasing out those provisions after two
years.
"there are 40 times as many taxpayers
who get no benefit from the cuts as there are millionaires who will get
44 percent of the law's tax benefits in 2005."
DAVID FIRESTONE, NY Times 6/1/03
In the end, people earning over $1 million will
bring home an average of $93,000 extra this year while a single mother
of 2 struggling to make ends meet on $18,000/year will get no help.
Ben Cohen, True Majority.org
"the tax cut
could save Dick Cheney $100,000 a year"
"But
the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals
who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the
fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need.
The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when
will the public wake up?"
PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
Warren Buffett, one of the
richest men in America speaks out in Wash Post:
READ MORE
Tom the Dancing Bug:
Economy in Recovery (comic)
The Bush administration's pursuit of its reckless
fiscal policy . . .[has] undermined America's ability to lead on global
economic matters NY Times Editorial
"The Republicans Party On" and Bush approves
"drop in the top rate, to 35 percent from 38.6
percent — a windfall of scores of thousands of dollars annually for
wealthy Americans."
NY Times Editorial 5/22/03
Dr. W's Incredible Amazing Cure-All
Martin
Washington Post
Mr. Bush is running the federal government:
recklessly spending money it doesn't have and piling up debt it can't
afford even as it knows the really big bills are about to come due.
Washington Post Editorial
"What Jobs? What Growth?"
Washington Post Editorial “
"And so it goes. Tax subsidies for health insurance,
housing, retirement and most other things tend to benefit most those who need
the subsidies least, and to benefit least those who need the subsidies most,
while the subsidies themselves drive up prices."
Fox, Washington Post
America’s interests are in conflict with the rest of
the world. Watch for further falls in the dollar, followed by new calls
for protection and trade friction. And wear a seat belt.”
London Money Manager quoted by Miller in Newsweek I
n George Bush's America, jobs get erased like chalk marks on a blackboard.
More than 2 million have vanished on Mr. Bush's watch. There are now more
than 10.2 million unemployed workers in the U.S., including 1.4 million
who are not officially counted because they've become discouraged and
stopped looking.
Bush has said that his plan is a, "jobs growth package." But the only
thing guaranteed to grow is the federal budget deficit, something
Republicans used to care about, and I still do. We will be paying for
these tax cuts with borrowed funds, money borrowed from our children and
grandchildren who will be forced to foot the bill. And these deficits will
explode just as the baby boom generation begins to retire, further
endangering the health of Social Security and Medicare, both of which are
so critically important to our seniors." Senator Jeffords (Ind. Vermont)
". . .economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of
Cleveland and Boston University respectively -- "The [2001] Bush tax cut,"
they argue, "worsened the
generational imbalance
. . . by about one-fifth at a time when it was already huge." Further tax
cuts this year would do more of the same." Rauch, Washington Post
Tax Cut?
'states are "withdrawing health care for the poor
and mentally ill. They are also dismissing state troopers, closing parks
and schools, dropping bus routes, eliminating college scholarships and
slashing a host of other services." Not to mention unscrewing every third
light bulb in Missouri government offices. (Honest.)'
Krugman, NY Times
Bush's Economic Confusion
"The Bush administration is, of
course, notably unconcerned about deficits. Aren't the tax cuts in the
pipeline exactly what the economy needs? Alas, no. Despite their huge
size — if you ignore the gimmicks, the latest round will cost at least
$800 billion over the next decade — they pump relatively little money
into the economy now, when it needs it. Moreover, the tax cuts flow
mainly to the very, very affluent — the people least likely to spend
their windfall.
Meanwhile, state and local
governments, which are not allowed to run deficits — we have our own
version of the stability pact — are slashing spending and raising taxes.
And both the spending cuts and the tax increases will fall mainly on the
most vulnerable, people who cannot make up the difference by drawing on
existing savings. The result is that the economic downdraft from state
cutbacks (only slightly alleviated by the paltry aid contained in the
new tax bill) will almost certainly be stronger than any boost from
federal tax cuts."
MORE
Krugman, NY Times
The Bush Economy: Archive
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