The Verdict is in on the Bush Administration
Forget about war and torture, we now have the definitive economic story of that sorry period:
“On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.”
Details after the jump.
* Median real income fell from $52,500 when Bush took office to $50,303 when he left. That’s a 4.3 percent decline.
* When Clinton left office, 31.6 million people lived in poverty. When Bush left office, it was up to 39.8 million, the largest increase in poverty since 1960. That’s a 26 percent increase. Oh, an two-thirds of it happened before the global financial crisis.
* Child poverty? Up from 11.6 million to 14.1 million (21 percent).
* At the end of Clinton’s term, 13.7 per cent of Americans were uninsured, this rose to 15.4 percent under Bush.
Every one of these indicators showed a positive improvement under Clinton.
These are from the Census numbers. We could also look at Bush’s fiscal record, and show that the budget deterioration today can be almost fully explained by the effects of the economic cycle, and Bush’s spending spree — especially on wars and tax cuts for the rich. And while blowing up debt, Bush’s fiscal policies didn’t do much at all for the average person, or for the poor, did they?
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But MM, you just need to give his policies time to trickle down. Given adequate time – say, a century or two – we’ll all be sipping martinis on our yachts.
But appointing Roberts and Alieto to the high court more than makes up for these minor inconveniences, does it not?
Alert the tea-baggers and townhallers!
Given that they are motivated strictly by fiscal conservatism. . . they will want to know about this.
Right?
I’m with you in being against war, poverty, torture and the like, but why all the divisive, extremist rhetoric? I’m mean, if we’re going to reach center-right Catholics and other Christians, shouldn’t we be more positive and maybe a little less sarcastic?
For example, maybe we can find common ground on the fact that the debt increase under Bush was bad (as you rightly point out_, and what the Democrats/Obama are proposing with cap-and-trade, huge welfare and healthcare expansions, etc, are grossly irresponsible.
Mind you, I think you have a point here. Just wondering if we shouldn’t seek common ground with those who disagree.
But MM, you just need to give his policies time to trickle down.
Given that the word ‘trickle’ would seem to denote a meager quantity of something descending from some height, I’d say that we’ve all failed to attend to the words employed by the apologists for voodoo economics. They’ve told us, point-blank and literally, that under their policies, a few mocking dribbles of moisture will fall upon the benighted masses beneath them. The subconscious mind finds this too shocking to credit, and so represses it, allowing the conscious mind to alight upon other rhetorical tropes (“rising tides”, say), which appeared to suggest that, as the rich grew richer logarithmically, the non-rich would also gain in prosperity, but which actually meant only that the non-rich should perceive an identity of interests between themselves and the rich, ie., eschew “class warfare”.
In fine, the advocates of “trickle down” practiced the boldest sort of esotericism one can imagine: saying something so monstrously stupid so openly that no one will believe it.