No wonder Bush didn’t want to talk about job creation or unemployment last night — his policies still aren’t creating the jobs he promised.
We learned this morning that the economy added 144,000 jobs in August, which Reuters described as a “brighten[ing]” of the job market. That’s an unusually forgiving spin to discouraging news.
These results reflect an employment situation that is nowhere near where we’re supposed to be. As the Economic Policy Institute recently explained:
The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which was passed in May 2003 and took effect in July 2003, its “Jobs and Growth Plan.” The president’s economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers projected that the plan would result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004 — 306,000 new jobs each month starting in July 2003. The CEA projected that the economy would generate 228,000 jobs a month without a tax cut and 306,000 jobs a month with the tax cut. Thus, it projected that 3,978,000 jobs would be created over the last 13 months. In reality, since the tax cuts took effect, there are 2,565,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts.
We’ve already seen months of anemic job growth since the tax cuts became law. August’s numbers, which apparently will be trumpeted as great news by the White House, is less than half the job totals for the month that Bush guaranteed last year — and far short of where the White House expected us to be even without the tax cuts.
In other words, this is another month of awful news for American workers, which should be disastrous news for Bush’s political prospects.
Bush can’t say his tax cuts haven’t had time to take effect; we’re seeing the impact of his policy in full swing right now. Bush also can’t say Congress ignored his wishes, since he got everything he asked for. It just hasn’t worked. Bush gambled on a risky policy and that policy failed.
What’s worse, as of right now, the White House has no explanation for why the president’s economic policy has failed so dramatically. They just put their rose-colored glasses on, pretend that the status quo is terrific, and promise better results in a second term.
Bush will no doubt argue that August’s job numbers are a sign of his success. It’s a shame the president suffers the soft bigotry of low expectations.