Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Unemployment Lie

The Left has made a great noise of the unempolyment rates during the Bush presidency. I'd heard that it's been no worse under Bush than it was under Clinton. I decided to check it out for myself, and it was devastatingly easy to find this info at the beureau of labor statistics web site.

The all time high under Bush is 6.3 %in 2003.

The high under Clinton (the golden age of economics) is 6.6% 1994.

Let's look at it another way. In the 4th year of each president's term, the rates have been between 5.1% and 5.7%.

But that rate for Bush is called a disaster, for Clinton, it's remembered as the care-free good old days,

Clinton didn't see the unemployment rate drop below 5% until his fifth year.

Clinton saw both a higher rate than bush ever did, and lower rates too (as low as 3.8% in 2000). But he didn't do any better than Bush in his first term.

Furthermore, Bush faced much greater challenges to the economy that Clinton did.

The corporate crimes that have been investigated, and are being prosecuted during the Bush administration, were committed during the Clinton administration. These scandals rocked investor confidence. Where was Clinton's Justice dept on this? Bush's justice dept has convicted Andersen (Enron's accounting firm) and Martha Stewart (who needs no introduction).

There was a recession that followed the tech-stock bubble burst. How is Bush to blame for that?

Of course, it hardly needs mentioning that the 911 attacks were devastating to the market.

So in the face of all this, the Left considers Bush un-re-electable because he hasn't stimulated job growth "fast enough". If we judged Clinton as harshly at the end of his first term, our President these last 4 years would have been Bob Dole.

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