From economic boom to Bush, in a few easy steps
Time was, way back in 1992, when an unknown governor from Arkansas ran for the White House on a simple slogan — “It’s the economy, stupid!” — and won.
Today, with millions of “subprime” homeowners at risk of imminently losing the roof over their heads and the US economy on the cusp of recession (if it’s not, in fact, already there), a reprise of this slogan might seem a no-brainer for any adviser to the current crop of would-be presidents.
Except that eight years of wayward governance under George W. Bush have left Americans so dazed and confused that many no longer recognize where their true economic interests lie.
That might sound like a brazen — even presumptuous — assertion.
But consider some of the empirical evidence.
The signature economic policy of the Bush years was a series of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 totalling 1.6 trillion dollars geared predominantly to the very wealthiest Americans.
The idea was to stimulate the economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
While jobs were arguably created under Bush, the more recent trend points in the other direction. Only 18,000 jobs were created in the US economy in December — far below the average 110,000 that economists consider healthy — and unemployment jumped to 5%.
Bush has also proven an able prestidigitator — turning the booming fiscal surpluses of the Clinton years into a massive deficit. The eight-year Clinton boom became a massive bust for less fortunate Americans under Bush.
Paul Krugman, a Princeton economist who writes for the New York Times, notes in his Monday column that “for 30 years American politics has been dominated by a political movement practicing Robin-Hood-in-Reverse, giving unto those that hath while taking from those who don’t.”
As Krugman notes, Barack Obama, the Illinois Senator whose win in the Iowa caucus has imbued him with a front-runner’s aura, scares the daylights out of those fearful of his message of change:
“There’s a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.”
A few years ago, a journalist and historian named Thomas Frank, provoked a great debate with a book entitled What’s the Matter with Kansas?
It described the rise of conservative populism in his native Kansas — once a hotbed of radical, even anarchist, politics. Frank argued that in latter-day America — Bush’s America — those whose interests are hardest hit by conservative economic and social policies tend to be the most vociferous supporters of those policies.
Among his headline campaign promises, Obama is calling for a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for those earning above 250,000 dollars a year. He also wants to ease the tax burden on workers, homeowners and retirees.
There is a time in America when such a platform would have been music to the ears of many hard-pressed workers.
But if anything is certain in this campaign, you can count on the eventual Republican nominee (both John McCain and Mitt Romney would make the Bush tax cuts permanent) to turn that music into a shrill screech.
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National debt under Clinton: $5.7 Trillion
National debt today: $10.5 Trillion...will not hold |
