One of my e-mail pen pals sent a note the other day asking if I was now going to apologize for my columns that said that George W. Bush's tax cuts haven't created any jobs.
He pointed out that in each of the last two months, the Labor Department has reported significant job growth, putting total growth for the first four months of 2004 at 900,000 jobs.
Therefore, I was wrong, he insisted, and I need to admit it.
Let's put it this way: I will admit I'm wrong when and if I'm proven to be. But 900,000 jobs the past four months is, frankly, chicken feed for a tax cut that has thrown the U.S. budget into the biggest hole it's ever been in.
As Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times last week, those 900,000 new jobs are hardly exceptional.
During the first four months of 2000, for example, the last presidential election year, the economy created 1.1 million new jobs - at a time when Republicans now insist Bill Clinton's economy bubble had burst. In fact, the number of American jobs in April 2000 was 2.3 million higher than eight months before, August 1999.
And that, Krugman pointed out, was after seven years of sustained growth that had put the U.S. economy near full employment levels.
Indeed, to find a year that could compare with this year's first four months, one has to look back to 1994. That's when the country was coming out of the recession that began during the first Bush administration.
During those first four months, 1.3 million jobs were added - significantly more than what we've seen this year.
It needs to be remembered, too, that there were no tax cuts thrown into the mix to supposedly grow the economy. In fact, the budget deficit had actually started to shrink and by the time Bill Clinton got through with his eight years, there was a significant surplus - a surplus that just might have allowed the U.S. government to do some special things with Social Security, education and health care.
Instead, we're pumping tens of billions into a war that shouldn't have happened in the first place. We should have been hunting down Osama Bin Laden and the real terrorists scattered throughout the Mideast. Above all, if we were determined to go to war then we shouldn't have enacted tax laws that give rich people like Vice President Dick Cheney tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks and encourage corporations to "outsource" jobs overseas.
As someone said recently, this administration has created more jobs in China than it has in the United States.
So we'll all have to wait a while - perhaps a long while - for apologies.
By Dave Zweifel
May 31, 2004
The Capitol Times
He pointed out that in each of the last two months, the Labor Department has reported significant job growth, putting total growth for the first four months of 2004 at 900,000 jobs.
Therefore, I was wrong, he insisted, and I need to admit it.
Let's put it this way: I will admit I'm wrong when and if I'm proven to be. But 900,000 jobs the past four months is, frankly, chicken feed for a tax cut that has thrown the U.S. budget into the biggest hole it's ever been in.
As Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times last week, those 900,000 new jobs are hardly exceptional.
During the first four months of 2000, for example, the last presidential election year, the economy created 1.1 million new jobs - at a time when Republicans now insist Bill Clinton's economy bubble had burst. In fact, the number of American jobs in April 2000 was 2.3 million higher than eight months before, August 1999.
And that, Krugman pointed out, was after seven years of sustained growth that had put the U.S. economy near full employment levels.
Indeed, to find a year that could compare with this year's first four months, one has to look back to 1994. That's when the country was coming out of the recession that began during the first Bush administration.
During those first four months, 1.3 million jobs were added - significantly more than what we've seen this year.
It needs to be remembered, too, that there were no tax cuts thrown into the mix to supposedly grow the economy. In fact, the budget deficit had actually started to shrink and by the time Bill Clinton got through with his eight years, there was a significant surplus - a surplus that just might have allowed the U.S. government to do some special things with Social Security, education and health care.
Instead, we're pumping tens of billions into a war that shouldn't have happened in the first place. We should have been hunting down Osama Bin Laden and the real terrorists scattered throughout the Mideast. Above all, if we were determined to go to war then we shouldn't have enacted tax laws that give rich people like Vice President Dick Cheney tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks and encourage corporations to "outsource" jobs overseas.
As someone said recently, this administration has created more jobs in China than it has in the United States.
So we'll all have to wait a while - perhaps a long while - for apologies.
By Dave Zweifel
May 31, 2004
The Capitol Times
