Posted on 07/25/2006 2:32:49 PM PDT by MikeA
Mr. Bush signed the most recent tax cuts into law in the spring of 2003. In the past 33 months the size of America's entire economy has increased by 20%--or, as National Review Online's Larry Kudlow put it, "In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy."
In the 2 1/4 years before the 2003 tax cuts, economic growth averaged 1.1% annually; in the three years since it has averaged 4% per year, and in the first quarter of this year it was 5.6% on an annualized basis. Inflation-adjusted per capita GDP has grown 7.8% from 2003 through the first quarter of this year.
According to the government's establishment survey, in the 36 months since the tax cuts became law, 5.3 million new jobs have been added to the economy. According to its employment survey, 288,000 jobs were added in May and 387,000 in June. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.1% when the bills were signed to 5.4% at the end of 2004 and 4.6% today, and the rate has gone down for men, women, blacks and Hispanics. Hourly wage rates for workers are up 3.9% in the past year, and they increased at an annualized rate of 4.6% in the second quarter of this year, the highest quarterly rate in nearly 10 years.
Incomes are up too. As Stephen Moore noted in The Wall Street Journal, "the percentage of Americans earning more than $50,000 a year rose from 40.8% to 44.2%" between 2002 and 2004. As for very wealthy families, the portion of total income "captured by the richest 1%, 5% and 10% of Americans is lower today than in the last year of the Clinton administration."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The entirety of this great piece can be read on the Wall Street Journal's free site. You don't have to be a subscriber to go there: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110008699&ojrss=wsj
We should all keep this article to rebut the anti-tax cut crowd and the demagogues in the Rat party and the Rat media that claim tax cuts have been harmful.
Why won't the administration get these facts out about how their policies have boosted the economy? Bush has true bragging rights here, so why won't he take them? Not a day went by when the Clintonites, and their media allies, weren't taking credit for the state of the economy. And yet Clinton had NOTHING REAL in his policies he could honeslty point to that would have created the economy of the 90s. Bush does have something to point to that's created an economy on nearly every stat. that's in better shape than at the equivalent point in Clinton's presidency.
Notice the media will report none of these stats. The only economic news they'll report is the price of gas, and do so obsessively.
Bumpitty bump bump bump!
Great post! Thanks!
My pleasure. We need to spread this around since the administration is still apparently fearful to get out the word themselves. Hope you had a chance to read the whole article.
Why does that not surprise me? But the administration can always command a certain level of press attention indvidual Congressmen can't, and it doesn't seem to take advantage of that bully pulpit opportunity. It will take more than a press release to get this message out. It will take doing what Clinton did and having the president in front of the cameras giving speeches showing how his policies have lead to 4% GNP growth for 3 years and full employment. At least the president won't seem as shameless as Clinton in doing this since he has actual policies, unlike Clinton, that one can say helped create these economic conditions.
On another note, did Delay give any indication if he'll just go ahead and run to keep his seat in the fall since that fool judge wouldn't let him off the ballot?
Great, thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.