Bush Legacy: 84 Percent More Unemployed

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Rove must be working overtime on that "Legacy" project.



Another Bush Legacy: 84 Percent More Unemployed
January 12, 2009
By Isaiah J. Poole

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Since Bush took office, there has what columnist Marie Cocco describes as "an extravagant orgy of tax- cutting": $1.35 trillion over 10 years in 2001, $350 billion in 2003, $146 billion in 2004 and $142 billion in 2006. And yet, despite the utter failure of supply- side economics to yield the level of job growth that would have blunted this recession, the right won't let the tax-cut mantra go. Today, Lawrence Kudlow complains that President-elect Barack Obama's stimulus plan is "not reducing marginal tax rates on large and small businesses or individuals." Michael Reagan grouses that this is a time when it is "essential for out-of-control government spending to be halted and drastically cut back" and chides Obama, along with right-wing members of Congress, for rejecting "the tried-and-true approaches to economic stability."

Tried and true? More like tried and calamitous. The results are as plain as the state unemployment offices that can't handle the flow of new claims. Yet, the conservative counterargument continues to be reflexive opposition to government and uncritical worship of corporate tax cuts. What's clear is that the people who comprise the 84 percent increase in the number of unemployed under Bush's watch need a new direction.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009010209/another-bush-legacy-84-percent-more-unemployed

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