Snow Job

Former Texas Governor George W. Bush claims that the U.S. economy has created 1.5 million new jobs during the last 12 months. Senator John Kerry counters that, during the previous period beginning with Bush’s seizure of power in January 2001, we lost 1.8 million jobs. But as the Bureau of Labor Statistics says, the U.S. economy must create 1.8 million jobs annually just to keep even with the growth of the U.S. population and thus the workforce.

In other words, John Kerry is–in order to avoid stirring up controversy, one presumes, using the GOP’s stunted figures of job loss during the Bush years. Things are actually far worse.

During the Clinton years, 22 million jobs were created. Subtract the 12 million jobs that should be accounted for merely by population growth during those eight years and you’ve still got a net, robust, gain of 10 million.

Bush lost 1.8 million (not accounting for population growth), then gained 1.5 million. That’s a net loss of 300,000 jobs. But when you factor in the three years and seven months since the seizure of power, during which some 4.2 million jobs ought to have been created, he’s down a net loss of 3.9 million jobs. That’s the worst performance by any American leader since Herbert Hoover’s reign over the start of the Great Depression.

Want to be even more depressed? To match Bill Clinton, he would need to create 5 milliion more net jobs, plus 3.9 million population increase jobs, for a total of 8.9 million, by Election Day.

Why don’t the Democrats tell the truth? When Bush created 32,000 jobs during July, they said it wasn’t enough. The truth is, that’s a net loss of 118,000 jobs for that month alone, and they should say so.

I suspect that they allow the Republicans to fib because they would like to fib the same way after Kerry takes control over a lousy economy. But it’s dishonest and it isn’t smart. For when the Dems try to spin the jobs figures, you can be damned sure that Republicans won’t hesitate to call them on it.