Wampum

I knew it was bad...

But the brink of....economic Chernobyl?

From this afternoon's NY Times:

"Had we not taken action, this economy would have been in a deeper recession," Mr. Bush said. "It would have been longer, and as many as 1.5 million Americans who went to work this morning would have been out of a job."

To back up Mr. Bush's assertion, White House officials cited a Treasury Department analysis but provided no details.

Opponents of the president said they were confused by his assertion, since it implied that the economy was in particularly bad shape. "He's saying that we would have lost 4.2 million jobs without his policies," said Lawrence Mishel, a critic of Mr. Bush and the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research institution in Washington. "It's implausible because it implies that the economy was on death's door."

The last president to lose 4.2 million jobs in a single term was Dwight Eisenhower. But his Administration offset that loss by adding 4.9 million jobs. Even then, his VP lost the 1960 election.

Bush has announced a new six point economic recovery plan. Well, actually, it's more a compilation of six old plans, including cheerleading the tax cuts and continued pressure for drilling in the ANWR. That, and the new "Jobs Czar" is supposed to convince American voters that Bush is in fact on the job... of finding their lost jobs.

Posted by MB Williams at September 5, 2003 05:30 PM | TrackBack