Show Us The Jobs

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Wed, 2 Feb 2005 08:54:39 -0800 (PST)

Show Us The Jobs

 

 

 

 

Show Us The Jobs

February 01, 2005

 

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office revealed the U.S. deficit

has reached staggering levels— and that's without calculating the cost

of the ongoing occupation in Iraq. Among his priorities this year,

President George W. Bush wants to make his tax cuts permanent. Not

only do these tax cuts heap billions onto our national debt, but

Jonathan Tasini explains that the evidence shows they don't produce

the jobs his administration claims they will.

 

Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes

his " Working In America " columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

 

When the president delivers the State of the Union address, he will

lie. He will tell the American people that his tax cuts have helped

people get jobs and boosted the economy as a whole. And he will use

those untruths to push Congress to make his tax cuts permanent.

 

Let's go way back in history—three years—to the Bush administration's

so-called " Jobs and Growth Plan. " (Do journalists on the

administration's payroll come up with those Orwellian slogans?) The

administration's Council on Economic Advisers claimed the plan would

create 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004. In his State of the Union

address a year ago, the president himself said that, due to his tax

cuts, " Productivity is high, and jobs are on the rise. " And then he

said, " For the sake of job growth, the tax cuts you passed should be

permanent. "

 

So understand, the president was trying to make you believe that his

tax cuts mean more jobs. Rubbish. Here's what he claimed originally

for his phony plan: The tax cuts alone would yield 1.4 million jobs,

along with another 4.1 million jobs that would result from other

policies. But pesky facts cause problems for this administration.

 

Since the tax cuts took effect in July 2003, the administration's

projected monthly job growth was only met or exceeded three times. In

every other month—according to a new study by the Economic Policy

Institute —the projection was way off by tens of thousands of jobs. In

more than half of the 18 months the tax cuts have been a factor, the

job projections fell short by more than 200,000 jobs. July 2003 marked

the biggest shortfall with 351,000 fewer jobs recorded than the Bush

administration projected as a result of its tax cuts.

 

The Economic Policy Institute found that all but two states—Hawaii and

Wyoming—failed to make the projections put forth by the

administration. Twenty-nine states—both blue and red states—have fewer

jobs than when the recession started in March 2001. The other states

experienced job growth so anemic that the added jobs could not keep up

with the expansion of the workforce as a whole. Overall, the promise

of 5.5 million jobs fell 3.1 million jobs short—one of the worst

job-creation records in the past century (the president's best chance

to burnish his record is to compare himself to Herbert Hoover).

 

As important, wages are stagnating—which explains why people remain

very nervous about the economy. As EPI reports in a related analysis:

" Since the recovery's start in the fourth quarter of 2001, (real)

private wage and salary income is up only 3.9 percent. The average for

all economic recoveries that lasted 11 quarters or more from 1947

to1982 is 18.2 percent, and even the " jobless recovery " of the early

1990s saw 7.4 percent growth. "

 

Translation: On the administration's watch, people have less money to

spend, not more. The average tax cut of $300 for the not-wealthy is a

pittance compared to the thin paychecks people bring home. The drop in

pay over three years means the typical household has $1,500 less with

which to pay the bills—just as health care and energy costs have been

rising.

 

What's happening here? The administration has to lie. To sell tax cuts

overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthy, you have to promise something

for the middle class. You can't exactly call your economic plan " The

Enrich The Wealthy, Let the Rest Eat Cake " plan. It just doesn't have

the right ring to it. So the administration's domestic template bears

a startling resemblance to its foreign policy approach for explaining

reality: Fabricate a rationale for your policy and defend it no matter

what the facts are, and no matter the costs.

 

Now—as with the war in Iraq—there will be some who say that calling

the president a liar is unfair, that he made job promises in good

faith. But that's just not credible given the past evidence of the

relationship between tax cuts and job creation. At best, the president

can barely claim gross incompetence.

 

But certainly—with the past experience laid out for all to see—the

public should not buy any State of the Union claims that more tax cuts

will help create more jobs. There is, in fact, an argument to be made

that the president's tax cuts have contributed to job losses because

of large annual deficits and the crushing financial burden passed on

to state government budgets. When state governments are struggling,

the private sector—particularly small business—is burdened. And that

says nothing of the long-term consequences resulting from the

additional 10 trillion dollars of additional long-term debt over 10

years that Bush will saddle us with if his tax cuts are made

permanent. As Citizens for Tax Justice points out, because of the

Bush tax cuts, " By 2013 and thereafter, the government is likely to be

spending more on interest on the debt than on all domestic

appropriations put together—from education, to the environment, to law

enforcement, to science, to transportation, to veterans. "

 

In that sense, George W. Bush will leave office with generations of

Americans in his debt—deeply in debt for generations to come.

 

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/show_us_the_jobs.php