{"id":3415,"date":"2005-01-24T11:06:59","date_gmt":"2005-01-24T16:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3415.html"},"modified":"2005-01-24T11:06:59","modified_gmt":"2005-01-24T16:06:59","slug":"bush-by-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-by-the-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush by the numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was going to write something like this up over the weekend, but it appears Dave Koehler beat me to it<\/a>. It’s a great look at Bush “by the numbers.” Here are some highlights:<\/p>\n

Poverty Rate<\/a><\/br>
\n2000: 11.3%<\/b> or 31.6 million Americans<\/br>
\n2003: 12.5%<\/b> or 35.9 million Americans<\/p>\n

Stock market<\/a>
\nDow Jones Industrial Average
\n1\/19\/01: 10,587.59<\/b>
\n1\/19\/05: 10,539.97<\/b><\/p>\n

Value of the Dollar<\/a>
\n1\/19\/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros<\/b>
\n1\/19\/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros<\/b><\/p>\n

Budget<\/a>
\n2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion<\/b>
\n2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion<\/b>
\nThat’s a shift of $649 billion and doesn’t include the cost of the Iraq war.<\/p>\n

The Debt<\/a>
\nEnd of 2000: $5.7 trillion<\/b>
\nToday: $7.6 trillion<\/b>
\nThat’s a 4 year increase of 33%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don’t forget; as Bush insisted during the campaign, results matter.
\n
\nJust to add to the fun, here are two more numbers I’d like to add to the list:<\/p>\n

* Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq: 0.<\/p>\n

* Overall job growth during Bush presidency to date: negative 500,000<\/p>\n

I would assume that Bush’s defenders would respond by arguing that there are reasonable excuses for all of these failures. But those same supporters should ask themselves: If the numbers were reversed, and all of these policy issues had improved under Bush’s leadership instead of having worsened, wouldn’t the Republicans be bragging and insisting that Bush has been a success? <\/p>\n

If so, for the sake of intellectual honesty, it’s hard to avoid assigning responsibility to the leader who promised results but didn’t, or couldn’t, deliver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to write something like this up over the weekend, but it appears Dave Koehler beat me to it. It’s a great look at Bush “by the numbers.” Here are some highlights: Poverty Rate 2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans 2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans Stock market Dow Jones Industrial Average 1\/19\/01: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}