My beliefs as a conservative

Well you'll find the Democrats were firmly in control of all of Congress most of the time and of at least one house of Congress virtually all the time for the sixty years up to the GOP revolution of 1994, C.I.

Chart I:
Job Growth Rates under
recent Presidents :
President % Growth
in # years
Johnson (D) 3.8% in 5
Carter (D) 3.1% in 4
Clinton (D) 2.4% in 8
Kennedy (D) 2.3% in 3
Nixon (R) 2.3% in 5
Reagan (R) 2.1% in 8
Bush-I (R) 0.6% in 4
( Bureau of Labor Statistics )

And only George W. Bush had to deal with a 9/11 in the middle of an economy that had already slid into recession. (I'm not going to bother looking up the stats to see if you got them right.)

But why not show some fairness and post the job growth, GNP, wealth of American households, new housing starts, etc. now that the Bush economy has had a chance to take over and strut its stuff?

duplicate postings (actually about four)

another duplicate

and another

More wealth and jobs created by Democratic administrations
From Harding In 1921 to Bush in 2003, Democrats held White House for 40 years, and Republicans for 42.5 years, during which time,
1. Democrats created 75,820,000 net new jobs and Republicans 36,440,000.
2. Per Year Average : Democrats = 1,825,200 vs. Republicans = 856,400.
3. There was either a depression or a recession during the administrations of 6 of the 9 Republican presidents .
4. The DOW grew by 52% more under Democrats, and
5. The GDP grew by 26.4% more under Democrats.
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Democrat President Bill Clinton versus
Republican President Ron Reagan

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. 24% more jobs underClinton
2. 64% greater GDP under Clinton
3. 500% higher growth in the DOW under Clinton
4. Clinton increased national spending by 28%,
while Reagan increased it by 80%
5. Clinton increased national debt by 28% ,
while Reagan increased it by 187%
6. Clinton produced a huge surplus,
while Reagan increased deficits by 112%
Sources :

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.Gov)
-- Economic Policy Institute (EPI.org)

Global & World Almanacs from 1980 to 2003

www.the-hamster.com chart taken from NY Times

National Archives History on Presidents. www.nara.gov

Contact : [email protected]

And ahem C.I., Clinton had the first GOP controlled Congress in 60 years. See the difference that makes?

so now we are in our 5th Bush year and still not back to where we were when he started. Progress is not a conservative value. (which is why they are called "conservatives") on the other hand I would think "conservative" might mean not back-sliding but I guess I am wrong on that too. We may indeed make it back to 1890 with Jeb in
08.

Just a quick cursory review of the last year of Clinton's first term shows lower numbers than the last year of Bush's first term. And Clinton did not have to overcome a 9/11 terrorist attack that struck at the heart of the U.S. economy.

Nobody can know whether anybody, and I do mean anybody, would have had better numbers than Bush has had in the face of a 9/11 coupled with a recession already in progress.

History repeats itself; it's pretty safe to say democrats were more successful for the American People as a whole than any repub president or congress. Bush controls congress, and things are looking really bleak. Even Bush says the deficit will be around far beyond 2009, and he's making it worse. You probably haven't noticed how our currency markets are reacting to all this federal deficit.

Hmmm, jobs are up enough to make the market happy, inflation is staying within bounds, American family wealth is at an all time high, GNP is up, productivity is up, unemployment is stable, and the market watches nervously to see if Greenspan will significantly increase interest rates to cool down a booming economy. Almost all inflation is in crude oil and we will have to address that sooner or later. We can't stay under OPEC's thumb forever. The lower dollar is both good and bad for various reasons. The deficit is a concern for all of us, but will be less so if the economy continues to prosper. The trade deficit is a concern though our exports are also way up.

My own small business has increased dramatically this past year due to so many brand new businesses starting up.

All in all, I still say nobody can say any president and/or Congress would have done better re the economy during this past five years with the circumstances being as they have been.

But of course the Dems reallly REALLY want the economy to be bad and try very hard to play it up that way as one of their best hopes to start winning elections again.

Jobs are barely keeping up with the demand of new workers coming into the market. We are looking at a net loss of jobs for the past five years.

Neocoms are not conservatives. They are radicals who make this liberal miss conservatives.

Fox, Your own small business is right; if you've bothered to keep up with the news, even WalMart is expanding at a phenomenal rate. However, we must look at the US as a whole when discussing job gains or losses. It's been a net loss since Bush took over the white house. That's fact.

As a matter of fact, Bush's net job loss is worst since Hoover. Why are you republican so blind and dumb?
*********************
Bush's Job-Loss Recovery the Worst on Record Since the Great Depression (October 7, 2003)

By Cynthia Green

With wages stagnant, job creation slow and unemployment swelling, it's clear that President Bush's trillion-dollar tax cuts still haven't produced the kind of economic recovery that will lift all workers and job seekers.

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the labor market is in worse shape now that when the most recent recession ended, in November 2001.

In "Labor Market Left Behind," senior economist Jared Bernstein and EPI President Lawrence Mishel give Bush and his team the dubious honor of presiding over the lousiest recovery, in terms of employment growth, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking employment in 1939.

Bush's first and perhaps last term in office will end with a net job loss, likely in the millions, making him the only commander-in-chief since Depression-era President Herbert Hoover to earn such a distinction.

"Since the recovery began, the unemployment rate has gone up by 0.6 percentage points," the authors note. The African-American jobless rate has risen by 1.3 percentage points. And though the downturn has crossed so many demographic lines, the slump in job opportunities has been worse for college graduates than for high-school dropouts, according to the report.

Private-sector payrolls are off by 1.2 million jobs, or 1.1%, since the end of the recession, "making this the weakest employment recovery on record," Bernstein and Mishel write. In all previous recoveries since World War II, even the sluggish one in the early 1990s, the economy has added jobs by this point in the cycle.

When the recovery began, unemployment stood at 5.6%, up from 4.2% at the beginning of the recession. It's been drifting higher ever since, booking a 6.1% rate in September, more than 20 months out from the end of the recession, and again unusual for post-WWII recoveries.

The 57,000-job gain in September was largely due to a 33,000 rise in temporary employment - the kind of jobs that don't offer benefits and don't stick around.

In contrast to the Clinton-era boom of the late 1990s, when an average of 240,000 jobs were added monthly and inflation-adjusted wages were growing at a 2.0% annual clip, real pay stopped growing altogether in 2002 - and fell by about 1.0% for low- and high-wage workers, according to Bernstein and Mishel.

The economy that has been hemorrhaging an average of 93,000 jobs monthly since March 2001 also suffers from chronic long-term joblessness, the authors note.

Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment has lengthened by 2.7 weeks, from 16.6 to 19.3 weeks. Since April, the average jobless spell has lasted 19.5 weeks. The last time this rate was above 19 weeks for at least four months was in late 1983, when the jobless rate was about 9.0%, Bernstein and Mishel write.

"The relatively low rate of unemployment masks the full extent of labor market distress," they write, noting also the millions of part-time workers frustrated in their search for full-time jobs and others who cannot enter the work force because of obstacles like child care or transportation constraints.

Further, anemic job creation has increased the competition for fewer available slots. As many as two million discouraged folks have given up searching for work and are no longer counted among active job-seekers. This phenomenon of a "missing workforce" has actually kept the unemployment rate artificially low, and also means that once these people return to the labor market, the struggle for jobs will be that much more fierce, the report says.

"Although the economy is expanding, it is doing so at too slow a rate to quickly lower unemployment or generate the needed job growth," Bernstein and Mishel write.

"Even if predictions of a strong rebound in growth in the second half of 2003 are accurate, unemployment will remain close to 6.0% through the rest of this year and most of 2004," they say. The economy must grow by more than 3.5% to bring down the jobless rate. Figures for the latest quarter show the economy expanding by only 2.4%.

The Republican theology of tax giveaways for the wealthy has not yet translated into a recovery for workers, but the combination of these cuts and rising government is likely to generate some job creation along with faster economic growth, Bernstein and Mishel say. Still, dispiriting recent wage trends and depressed employment levels suggest that a "self-sustaining, robust recovery is not just around the corner," they say.

"It will be a long wait before the economy returns to the tight job market and broad-based wage gains that workers benefited from just a few years ago at the end of the 1990s," Bernstein and Mishel write.

Cynthia Green is a freelance writer.



© 2003 Labor Research Association

I will leave it to the Republicans in this thread to answer this rhetorical question. But let me add an observation from a European perspective: We have tried all of the cures your Democrats have prescribed for this condition -- and our unemployment rates, just like yours, are at their highest since the Great Depression. I have no desire at all to make excuses for president Bush. But it does appear that this particular problem is not specific to him -- and it is certain that my country would take your unemployment rate in exchange for ours anytime.

Yes Thomas I pretty much agree that Bush has had little if anyting to do with unemployment in the US, what is irritating is that the Bush supporters insist that the Bush Admin has solved the problem and that it no longer exists.

No administration, other than George W. Bush's, has had to deal with a 9/11 hitting in an already recessionary period. Until the hecklers, prophets of doom, and black shroud commentators factor that in, you're all just going to look silly trying to smear a very good economy and/or the President who has had to deal with it and not interfere with the recovery.

It is odd that the U.S. economy is having such a bad time, when other countries (like Canada) are not having those same difficulties. I haven't really seen any good explanations for the U.S. deficit continuing to grow at the pace it has been recently. Explanations, yes, but not ones that make any sense.