Bush: A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy - and that is what we have. We are now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth - in a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs ... so far. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising. This economy is on the move - and our job is to keep it that way, not with more government but with more enterprise.
Fact: Job growth is the weakest on record. Job growth during the current business cycle, beginning in March 2001, has averaged an annualized 0.5 percent per month, the lowest of any business cycle since the Great Depression. In fact, this is less than a quarter of the average of all prior business cycles since World War II. Since the recession ended in November 2001, job growth has averaged an annualized 0.8 percent, or 85,000 jobs per month, instead of the 2.7 percent average growth rate during recoveries of at least equal length since World War II.
The Bush administration commonly points to job growth since the point at which job losses stopped in August 2003—using this period to highlight labor market gains. Yet even since August 2003, the economy has still had slower job growth than during similar periods of prior business cycles. From August 2003 to December 2006, the economy gained 6.4 million jobs, an average of 160,000 jobs per month. During the same months in prior business cycles (months 21 to 61 months), the economy added 179,000 jobs each month in the mid-1960s, 222,000 in the 1980s recovery, and 246,000 in the 1990s recovery, which was a full 50 percent higher per month.
('Real wages' are "rising", although they were down again in December 2006, but 2006 is the exception to Bush's previous years, and overall, real earnings, on average, are down during his administration.)
Bush: First, we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes. What we need to do is impose spending discipline in Washington, D.C. We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009 - and met that goal three years ahead of schedule. Now let us take the next step. In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years. I ask you to make the same commitment. Together, we can restrain the spending appetite of the federal government, and balance the federal budget.
Fact: Congressional Budget Office data show that the tax cuts have been the single largest contributor to the reemergence of substantial budget deficits in recent years. Legislation enacted since 2001 has added about $2.3 trillion to deficits between 2001 and 2006, with half of this deterioration in the budget due to the tax cuts (about a third was due to increases in security spending, and about a sixth to increases in domestic spending). Yet the President and some Congressional leaders decline to acknowledge the tax cuts’ role in the nation’s budget problems, falling back instead on the discredited nostrum that tax cuts "pay for themselves."
Bush: Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour - when not even C-SPAN is watching. In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate - they are dropped into Committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk.
Fact: The president's earmarks are harder -- if not impossible -- to tally. Many appear only in closely held supplements separate from the public budget books. Also, as head of the executive branch, the president often doesn't need earmarks: Once federal agencies get funding from Congress, his appointees are fairly free to steer sums to places, programs and vendors as the administration decides -- from Pentagon contracts to this year's $100 million Teacher Incentive Fund, another priority of Mrs. Bush.George Bush, or any Republican for that matter, should not be lecturing on 'earmarks'. We all know that they have gone from 4,000-some to 15,800-some during their reign of power. In fact, the new majority in Congress is trying to take care of it....they'll just need Bush's signature.
That attracts lobbyists for special interests, just as at the Capitol. "They can go to agencies as easily as to Congress," says Keith Ashdown, vice president for the watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.
The administration's license to spend is one reason why Congress earmarks funds -- to assert its "power of the purse" and limit the president's.
Center for American Progress
The Wall Street Journal
Center for Budget & Policy Priorities
Center for Budget & Policy Priorities
(h/t thru Think Progress)
