At least some private sector jobs are being created

June 22, 2005

For the first 52 months of the Bush presidency (January 2001 to May 2005), private sector jobs are down 24,000. Since the Great Depression no other president who served at least 52 months has overseen a net loss in private sector jobs through this point.

Yet, the news is not all bad. The good news is that while the private sector’s job market has been bleak since Bush’s inauguration, there is at least one sector that’s been hiring like crazy. The bad news is the sector is Washington’s powerful lobbying industry.

To the great growth industries of America such as health care and home building add one more: influence peddling.

The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750 while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent. Only a few other businesses have enjoyed greater prosperity in an otherwise fitful economy.

The lobbying boom has been caused by three factors, experts say: rapid growth in government, Republican control of both the White House and Congress, and wide acceptance among corporations that they need to hire professional lobbyists to secure their share of federal benefits.

“There’s unlimited business out there for us,” said Robert L. Livingston, a Republican former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and now president of a thriving six-year-old lobbying firm. “Companies need lobbying help.”

And when Livingston says “help,” he means corporate clients hire Republican lobbyists to help generate generous benefits for Big Business from Congress.

As Jeffrey Birnbaum noted today, lobbying was a reactive response during the Clinton years, because “corporations had to fend off proposals that would have restricted them or cost them money.” Now, Republicans are running the show and corporate interests know it’s a unique opportunity — to get new tax breaks, loosen regulations, and receive “other government goodies that increasingly are available.”

It’s created a K Street environment in which lobbying firms can’t hire people fast enough. Starting salaries have risen to about $300,000 a year and nearly half of all lawmakers who return to the private sector when they leave Congress have become lobbyists. And, of course, all the new lobbyists are Republicans — by congressional fiat.

When I said it’d be nice to see someone get a private sector job in Bush’s America, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.

Gotta love these technically true, but fundamentally false spin slogans:
“For the first 52 months of the Bush presidency (January 2001 to May 2005), private sector jobs are down 24,000. Since the Great Depression no other president who served at least 52 months has overseen a net loss in private sector jobs through this point.”

To the typical newspaper reader, one might think “Oh dear God, its the worst economy since the depression.” Kerry threw around these little spin gem himself. But lets look at it. 24,000 “jobs down” in an economy as huge, and with a population as large as ours, considering the incredibly huge impact of 9/11, is not bad at all. It is a testament to our government and to the american spirt itself, of the incredible resilience of our nation. 9/11 was probably the single most catastophic event on american soil to our civilian population and economy since the Civil War. Yet somehow the Democrats want to make the people believe that they would have done it so much better that the economy would have been revving at full employment within a year of two of Sept. 11. Horse-pucky.

  • Come on Force, now who’s doing the spinning?

    Being down “only” 24,000 jobs means a raw statistical number — we have a grand total employment of 24,000 less today than in January 2001. What that fails to take into account is the REAL jobs number of WHERE we should be at this point. The BLS and most serious economists will tell you that we need 150,000 NEW jobs each and every month just to absorb those who are first-time job seekers (young people, immigrants, divorcing spouses, etc.)

    On that basis, in order to keep the same proportion of the American workforce employed, we would have needed 150,000 jobs X 52 months = 7,800,000 new jobs. So, in PRACTICAL terms, Bush is actually 7,800,000 + 24,000 = 7,824,000 jobs behind!! The fact that the unemployment rate is slightly lower than 52 months ago has to do with discouraged workers who are not counted as “unemployed,” who have either dropped out of looking for a new job OR have been out of work for so long (having exhausted all unemployment benefits) that they are no longer tracked by the governmental agencies charged with that responsibility.

    I suggest that John Kerry was dead-on: we gave away $2 trillion in tax cuts, the substantial mojority to the rich, and we have not created even one new private sector job, let alone the millions upon millions that Bush and Greenspan and all of the Rethugs promised. And the jobs that have been created are averaging $9,000.00 less per year and have no benefits.

    And don’t give me the crap about 9/11, about the recession Bush “inherited” from Clinton, or the war on terror. The recession was short lived (under 11 months) and extremely mild by historical standards, and all of these excuses might be asserted for the annual deficits, but have not one whit of legitimacy with respect to the failure to create the jobs as promised. If anything, the billions of dollars spent on recovering from 1/11 and the GWOT should have created millions in new employment, but those moneys have gone to the fat cats along witht the tax cuts, and consequently there is no incentive to create NEW jobs. And don’t even get me started on shipping jobs overseas.

    Go READ the detailed reports put out each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and maybe even a few columns by Krugman; take a break from NRO, from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, and from Faux News — you might be seriously shocked at just how uninformed your opinion is as you expressed it above. [As an aside, I DO visit those sites regularly, inaddition to Investors Business Daily, The Economist, and many others — THEN I analyze the data, the spin, and reach the real truth that Bush’s happy talk can’t hide: this economy seriously sucks.]

  • We’ll never see the full employment we saw in ’90s under a Republican administration, their corporate masters won’t allow there to be such stiff competition for workers. Also, if you think the average 1 percent difference in the unemployment rate between Republican and Democratic administrations is just a coincidence, you also probably still continue to think a little fairy brought you a dollar for every tooth you lost when you were a child.

  • Ah A.L- I parry thee! Look at Europe. They do all the things you libs so long to do. Across the board. Go look at all the statistic sites you like. Their unemployment benefits are the most generous of the free world. Their government job training programs, taxation policy, labor unionization, governmental domestic spending, are all where you folks long for us to be. They have cradle to grave, head to toe socialized medicine and completely funded educational systems. Despite all this, they all have tremendously high unemployment rates. Germany’s is over 12%!!! What is it that you would have our nation do that would make the end result any different should we adopt the Democratic agenda? The one smart thing they could have done (the economic portion of the EU constitution) is being thrown in the trash. From here on out, we will witness the economic downfall of Europe.
    Secondly GO READ (and choose your source) any respectable evaulation of what the financial impact of 9/11. I think you need to be refreshed on the absolute havoc it wreaked directly and in subsequent ripple effects around the world. That is certainly not “crap” as you assert. And you still dodged the point. Nothing that you guys would have done would have made it any better. No society has ever taxed itself into prosperity.

  • Force –

    Obviously, 9/11 will be a drag on our economy for the foreseeable future. I’m sure when the job market rebounds, and the working poor and middle class finally see the benefits, you’ll be thanking Bush and the Republican congress. That it happens after a Democratic President and Congress are able to raise taxes levels back to where they belong and enact legislation that benefits the average American at the expense of the wealthy, instead of the other way around? Hey, that won’t have anything to do with it, right? Just like the booming economy that started after Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy was because of Reagan, right?

    In Repub-world, is there any result or condition anywhere, no matter how bad, that isn’t a testament to how perfect Bush’s policies are and how well they’re executed? No, what was I thinking, whenever two alternative solutions are proposed, the one Bush chooses is obviously the correct one by definition. Terrible results could only have been worse otherwise, right?

  • I’m still holding my breath waiting to see the results of supply side – trickle down or voodoo economics to work, and I’m turning quite blue from lack of oxygen.

    The main gist of the theory is that by cutting taxes on the upper income levels, money is supposed to be invested in capital goods and thereby create new jobs, which has been done quite well, if you consider that more money is being invested in Chinese manufacturing than at home and has created many jobs overseas.

    No society has ever taxed itself into prosperity.

    I find this statement somewhat shortsighted as it completely ignores the prosperity in this country during the post WWII era, an era when the United States had the most progressive taxation in it’s history, and we were probably closer to full employment than anytime in the last 100 years.

    I don’t discount the psychological effect that 9/11 had on the economy, consumer confidence plays a huge role in the amount of consumption that goes on, but here we are again to the jobs issue. People don’t consume when they aren’t confident about what the future holds and if they worry that they might not have a job in the future then they aren’t going to consume as much.

    This is a good debate, one that I feel is much more important than the trial of a pedophile pop singer.

    My favorite musing, what will it be like when everyone has a job at Wal-Mart and no one can afford to shop there.

  • Outlaw the lobbyist!! They practically do nothing that is good for the people of this country. It’s all for the benefit of corporations and the rich.
    These politicians and ex-politicians ( lobbyist ) have nothing in common with 95% of the US population. Their job is to fuck everyone else over and to line their pockets.
    You hear these politicians talking about people who make $50,000 as being rich but if the day ever came they only had $50,000 a year to live on they would sit down and cry.
    We should look at some study that shows what percentage of people fit in what wage class.
    Bush is a hack who cares NOTHING about ordinary people. He has always been fed from the golden spoon and always will, as well as his children.
    Poitics needs to go back to ordinary people who care about real values! Food,Health Care, Shelter, Family, Envirement. Before we worry about getting Democracy in every other country in the world maybe we should have it here and NOT just for the rich.

  • Mark, the mere existance of prosperity existing alongside a period of progressive taxation (as you call it) does not command the conclusion that one is the result of the other. That (as well, perhaps) is “short sighted.” Both Reagan and then Clinton presided over an era of great prosperity- the two greatest periods in our economic history. One cut taxes, one raised them. One had increased deficits (reagan, but the Democratic Congress also had a hand to play in that, and we had the Cold War to win), while the other reduced the deficit- largely in part because of the huge “peace dividend” because Reagan won the Cold War. But yet again, no one can show proof that increased taxes of themselves were the stimulus of any economy. We may not like to believe it, but there are actually market and world “historic” forces that can play a far greater role in our economic wealfare than any president or Congress can. I believe 9/11 is one of those water-mark events- for the bad. I believe that no matter who was president, the economy was bound to suffer heavily and for some time. The only thing the government could truly do, is prevent another attack from making it work. Our leaders and governmental foot soldiers in State, DOD, CIA, FBI, etc., despite setbacks and mistakes, have managed to do this pretty well.

  • Force,

    There are some points in your post that I can find aggreement with, however, when I see or hear the statement that Reagan won the Cold War I have yet to see any evidence that substantiates that claim.

    From my readings the former Soviet Union fell not because of the military spending war with the United States, but according to Eduard Shevardnadaze the Soviet foreign minister of the time it was the demand for more and better consumer goods that drove the unrest that ended Soviet rule. It ended up that the people weren’t happy with how resources were being allocated, which makes more sense than saying Reagan ended the Cold War.

    I do find one commonality between Reagan and Clinton, that is the charismatic quality that both men had. The ability to inspire the people of the country counts for a lot, and could quite probably drive up the consumer confidence factor of the economy.

    Of course as far as Republican administrations go Reagan’s criminal factor was higher than Nixon’s but not as high as Bush’s. Sorry to say that, but when I keep seeing the same players surface again and again and the same types of illegal activities going on it just leaves a bad taste for the Republican party in my mouth.

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