George W. Bush—By the Numbers [View All]

[struggle4progress]

By: Walter Brasch - 09/07/05

<snip> When Bush came into office. Bill Clinton left him a $230 billion surplus and a balanced budget. Not only isn’t the budget balanced, that surplus from five years ago has turned into a $7.95 trillion deficit, increasing at the rate of about $1.7 billion a day. That’s about $27,000 for every American, including those who are unemployed.

Part of that deficit is because of his ill-conceived tax cuts. In his first year in office, Bush pushed through a $1.35 trillion tax cut, followed by almost $400 billion in additional cuts, which primarily relieved the financial burden of the wealthy. The top one percent of wage earners, those making at least $356,000 a year, received 45 percent of the cuts, with their share rising to almost 52 percent by 2010. The 36 million Americans who are living below the poverty line have little concern about the tax cuts since they receive almost no benefit. Nevertheless, Bush claimed the tax cuts would spur the economy and create more jobs. In the 30 months after the tax cuts were announced, 2.4 million jobs were lost.

Last month, more than 7.5 million Americans who wanted work were unemployed. Another 1.5 million, several hundred thousand of whom are so discouraged they have given up trying to find work, weren’t included in that number because they didn’t report to a state or federal office. About three million are homeless; mostly, they aren’t counted in unemployment statistics. Not worrying about unemployment are the oil company executives whose companies are receiving about $11 billion in government incentives for oil exploration, and recording their highest profits ever.

Since President Bush’s inauguration in January 2001, about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs and almost 850,000 professional and trade sector jobs have been outsourced to other countries, according to research conducted by the AFL-CIO. Most of the manufacturing jobs have gone to Mexico, China, and several Asian countries. Professional telemarketing and technical support jobs to assist American consumers on everything from computers to playground slides have gone to India and other countries. The Bush Administration pushed through a $20 billion tax reduction plan that resulted in an 85 percent tax cut on profits earned in foreign countries. The tax cut has little to do with stimulating the languid economy, increasing jobs in America, or helping the unemployed; it does encourage corporations to develop more overseas operations. <snip>

http://www.liberalslant.com/wb090705.htm