George W. Bush—By the Numbers

[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

[zum]

1. Australia is USA Lite

except that the neocons worked quickly after achieving government to became the highest-taxing in our history (through instituting a broad-based goods-and-services tax regime which shifted the bulk of taxation from sales and manufacturing on to consumers, to replace the previous wholesale-exchange-based one. Obviously the poorest, who have to expend all of or the greater part of their income to live were hardest hit). This allowed the current government to accrue substantial budget surpluses which are used to justify substantial tax cuts for higher income earners as a benefit of "responsible management". Almost all of the last paragraph of the above post is applicable to Australia since the current government assumed office, although the figures are proportionately lower. I don't think (or I don't choose to!) that Australia would be as exposed by calamity as the US has been, previous smaller-scale disasters in this country have shown that systemic measures in place have worked commendably well, and it would be foolhardy, if not suicidal, for a political entity to attempt to dismantle them, even if their ideology would suggest it.

[texpatriot2004]

2. He always was bad with numbers...fuzzy math and all. n/t

[dickthegrouch]

3. More numbers

Potential campaign idea for next year:

Poster showing

(Over George W Bush’s Signature)

LOST:
$89,000,000,000 increase in federal deficit
$73,000,000,000 in Iraq
7,900,000 Personal Bankruptcy filings
3,000,000 Jobs
25,000 Iraqi Lives
3,800 Afghani Lives
2,830 Lives in WTC 9/11/01
1,800 US Soldier’s lives
294 (?) Rights from the 1st, 2nd 4th and 14th amendments
My original last line for the poster was:
2 Elections
(I created it in 2003 in preparation for the 2004 elections)

Of course these numbers would have to be updated for whatever the real totals are and a date given as to when they were correct.
(All numbers were gleaned off the web, this evening, but were not exhaustively cross-checked.)