Tomorrow's debate: If, every time the president opens his mouth , you think you're living in an Orwellian world (the administration's message on Iraq is "Mayhem is progress!"), tomorrow's debate on domestic policy won't surprise you. The only way the president will be able to defend his administration's economic policies is to mislead, obfuscate and lie. Here's a handy rebuttal on the basic economic issues—based on assumptions about what the president will say, his campaign speeches, last debate's transcript and information posted on the Bush-Cheney website.
Taxes
What the president will say: Referring to his tax cuts as benefitting "the middle class" and spurring job growth, he will assert, "Everybody got tax relief so that they get [sic] out of the recession." (From the second debate.)
The truth: In 2003, almost half of all taxpayers got less than $100 from the tax cuts, a real recession-busting bonanza for average people. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, almost two-thirds of the Bush "tax cuts will go to the best-off 10 percent of all taxpayers, and well over half will go to the top five percent. In contrast, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers will get only 7.8 percent of the tax cuts, averaging less than $100 a year over the next four years. The average tax reduction for the richest one percent over the next four years will total $96,634. Over that period, this tiny but wealthy group will enjoy 36 percent of the tax cuts." See the Citizens For Tax Justice report, Final Tax Plan Tilts Even More Toward Richest .
Understand this: The president is attempting to obliterate almost 100 years of progressive values and—if given a second term—his administration will effectively abolish the graduated income tax, impose a flatter tax system that benefits the wealthy and allow the rich to shelter most of their income.
By the way, in a poll of 100 economists by The Economist magazine—no left-wing voice—70 percent of the respondents said Bush's economic policies had been bad or very bad. Their central criticism? The tax cuts. More than 70 percent of the economists thought the tax cuts were bad policy, mainly because of the huge deficits the tax cuts created. Fewer than 20 percent gave the president's second-term plans the thumbs up (Note to economists expecting a mea culpa : this president doesn't admit mistakes).
Fiscal Policy
What the president will say: "Yes, there is a deficit but I'm not going to shortchange our troops in harm's way and I'm still going to cut the deficit in half (wink)."
The truth: The president has made a colossal mess of the country's financial books. He inherited a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion and turned it into a projected $5.2 trillion debt-an astonishing $9 plus trillion turn-around.
It is complete nonsense—no, an outright lie—to blame the fiscal debacle as he typically does: on 9/11, a recession he "inherited" and the bursting of the stock market bubble. Most reputable economists and academics agree that more than 50 percent of the forecasted long-term debt comes from policy choices the president made—principally the tax cuts weighted to the rich and the war in Iraq. Because of the tax cuts for the wealthy, we taxpayers will have to pay an additional $538 billion just in interest payments through 2010. The president's choices mean that we will now spend more every year to pay the interest on the debt than on education, law enforcement, homeland security, veterans and international aid combined.
Two observations: First, I've always been skeptical of 10-year economic projections, none of which I'd wager have ever been correct because to use a technical economic term shit happens. But, however you slice it, the picture is pretty bad. Second, I'm not a deficit hawk because deficits are not such a bad thing-if you spend the money in the right places. Unlike showering the already-filthy rich with more money or launching an ill-advised war, if you run a deficit to build schools, create a national health care system or advance new "clean" energy technologies, it's worth the investment—a point Kerry should make. It's the priorities, stupid, not the deficit.
Jobs
What the president will say: "We've added 1.9 million new jobs in the last 13 months (slight smirk)."
The truth: Looking at the last 13 months is like a baseball team lauding their play in the ninth inning after giving up 20 runs in the previous eight innings. The president is lying when he claims he "inherited" the recession: it began in March 2001, two months after he took office. In those 42 months, 940,000 jobs have evaporated from the economy. The easiest thing to do is use the Bush administration's own promises made as part of its push for the tax cuts (one could reasonably assume, given the track record, that those promises were lies). In the so-called "Jobs and Growth Plan," the president promised an average of 300,000 new jobs per month and the creation of 5.5 million new jobs by the end of 2004.
As the Economic Policy Institute points out: "In reality, since the tax cuts took effect there are 2,882,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts. The September job growth of 96,000 fell 210,000 jobs short of the administration's projection."
And it is true that the president will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to see a net job loss during his tenure. Again, as EPI notes, "In the three downturns since the early 1970s, the economy had not only recovered from any job loss but had also generated 4.3% more jobs. By this standard, the economy would have had a positive job gain of 5,750,000 by the 42nd month, or 6,691,000 more jobs than we have today." (emphasis added). In George Bush's world, Job Loss is An Economy Moving Forward.
Workers' Rights
What the president will say: Well, probably nothing, other than talk about his plans for an "ownership society."
The truth: Where do we start? The president eliminated overtime rights for up to 6 million workers. If the question comes up, the president will lie, claiming he expanded overtime rights: in a classic shell game, he included a few more people at the bottom who were excluded, and ripped away the rights of nurses, cooks and other people who make between $23,660 and $100,000, many of whom live from paycheck and paycheck.
The president has been extremely anti-union. His appointments to the National Labor Relations Board are reversing gains made by workers who want to have a union at work. He has attacked the rights of government employees to unionize (then-Senator Max Cleland opposed the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security because it ripped away the right to union representation, leading to the Karl Rove-directed scurrilous attacks on Cleland's patriotism, which lead to his defeat in 2002; while Cleland, the winner of Bronze and Silver Star meals, lost three limbs in the Vietnam War, Rove never served).
Health Care
What the president will say : He's "working to address the root causes of rising health care costs, rather than shifting the costs to taxpayers or forcing Americans into an inflexible, one-size-fits-all bureaucratic system." And he'll claim he came to Washington and solved the Medicare crisis.
The truth: Under this president, health care costs are skyrocketing again, rising 14 percent in 2003; 43 million Americans are now uninsured. The president's solution to the health care crisis is, not surprisingly, about taxes and the free market: offer a few tax cuts and let the wonders of the market work. The great health care scam: convince people that the solution is for them to put their own money into so-called "health savings accounts," rather than act like every other advanced democratic country in the world where health care is a public, government responsibility. And, concocting the cockamamie excuse of drug safety, he's blocking the re-importation of drugs from Canada, which would lower costs but hit the bottom line of U.S. drug companies. He's promising to spend a paltry $90 billion over 10 years; by contrast, Kerry proposes spending $650 billion over 10 years to cover 27 million of the uninsured (though, for my taste, even the Kerry proposal does not go far enough).
As for the Medicare bill rammed through Congress (by, among other tactics, Tom Delay threatening retribution against wavering Republicans in the House), it's become a nightmare for the elderly. The bill barred Medicare from negotiating lower prices for drugs, another sop to the drug companies and a hit on the pocketbooks of the elderly. For more, see The Facts About Bush's Medicare Deal. And the administration lied about the true cost of the bill which soared magically just a few weeks after its passage to $534 billion over 10 years, a third more than what Congress was told.
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