The Bushed Economy
Date Sunday, December 07 @ 01:21:13
The Bush economy is a house of cards, and it won’t take much to knock it down.
By Mick Youther
I’ve been meaning to do a column about how Bush & Co. are destroying the economy, but it looks like I waited too long. It seems everything is okay. The crisis is over. They’ve fixed the problem. That third tax cut must have done the trick because productivity is up, people are going back to work, and President Bush is spreading the word across the country, “The American economy is strong, and it’s getting stronger.” I guess that “trickle down” thing really works.
• "Trickle Down Greedonomics is a theory that if Robber Barons are allowed to plunder more than they can carry, some of it will spill over and trickle on the lower classes so they can save some of their minimum wages."-- Pro-S.O.C.S. 1996
• “Bush has even figured out a way to trickle down deficits. The New Federalism involves moving programs downstream to states that can’t pay their own bills, thanks in part to the Bush-run economy. He’s redefined states rights to mean that every state has the right to cut whatever programs it wants.”-- Knute Berger, Seattle Weekly, 4/2/03
• "Democrats were quick to point out that President Bush's budget creates a 1 trillion dollar deficit. The White House quickly responded with 'Hey, look over there, it's Saddam Hussein.'"--Craig Kilborn, comedian
• “We are going to borrow money to give tax cuts. Never before in the history of our Nation will we have borrowed so much, a trillion dollars, to give to so few.”-- U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR), 5/9/03
• "Republicans used to believe in fiscal responsibility, limited international entanglements and limited government. We have come loose from our moorings.”-- Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.), LA Times, 11/30/03
• “The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting…”--George A. Akerlof, 2001 Nobel prize laureate, 7/29/03
• “Every president since Hoover has seen the economy add jobs. That puts Bush on track to post the worst jobs record in nearly 70 years.”-- Leigh Strope, AP, 11/5/03
• “The Republican-controlled Congress has passed the third tax cut in as many years, an enormous Pentagon budget, a costly experiment in nation-building in Iraq and a vast expansion of Medicare — all at the request of President Bush. Their actions have left the federal budget swimming in the largest deficits in history.”-- Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times, 11/30/03
• "It shows what you can accomplish if you don't care about deficits. That's going to be the most lasting legacy of this Congress."-- Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), LA Times, 11/30/03
• “By slashing taxes while he increases spending, Bush is governing as if he is in the Matrix, where the laws of gravity don't apply. But here in the real world, what goes up still comes down, which means kids too young to protest today will pay dearly tomorrow for the massive debts Bush is charging to their future.”-- Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, 12/1/03
To judge the effectiveness of BushCo’s economic plan, you have to know what they’re trying to do. If they’re trying to make America a better place to live, then I would use Dick Gebhardt’s term—“miserable failure”. On the other hand, if the idea is to destroy social programs, widen the gulf between rich and poor Americans, and to pass on a crushing debt to our children and grandchildren; in that case, I would say it looks like the perfect plan.
But how Bush can do this much damage and still expect to get re-elected? That is the true genius of his plan. He sweetened the plan with some little tax breaks, like increased child care credit, easing the marriage penalty, and expanded the lower tax brackets to include more low-income people. The only problem—those things are all due to expire in 2005, after he is re-elected. On the other hand, his tax breaks for the rich (i.e. rate reductions and capital gains and dividend tax breaks) don’t expire. The final touch is the incentives for businesses to invest in equipment also expire at the end of 2004, so they have to use it or lose it, thus making the economy appear to surge.
The Bush Administration is, has, and will use every trick in the book to keep this house of cards standing long enough to get George W. Bush re-elected. I do not even want to imagine what they have planned for their second term.
Mick Youther is an Instructor in the Department of Physiology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com
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