Please help me convince a friend that Dubya didn't inherit a recession!

[phattyt]

My friend wrote the following to me and presented me with this graph:

You know as well as I do that Bush doesn't take office till 2001. As you can see in 2000, there is a big drop off that Bush inherited and bottomed out around 9/11. Bush's policies are not going to be implemented in time to cause that drop off. By definition of a recession, it occured during Clinton's last term.




I need help to disprove him that the shrub inherited an economy going into recession from Clinton

[seabeyond]

1. i know others feel different, but

yes numbers were going down and we didnt get into recession until after bush took office. but..........it lasted a lot longer than should have per economists, and the policies bush has put in palce hasnt helped, i think the majority of the better numbers bush has gotten is feed back from the war. the contractors and all others that profit from war, but not in the economy itself and if bush didnt have war, the numbers wouldnt have improved, and clearly only slightly and some of the numbers.

bush has not helped econmy with his policies he is continuing to hurt econmy

[koopie57]

10. I think this is the best arguement too

let's, for a minute, assume that we were heading into a recession, what did bush do to make it less damaging. With so much surplus at the time, his omnipotent self and his close relationship to god, he certainly could have done something to stop it from being so disasterous.

[SemperEadem]

2. nip it in the bud

tell them you dont' have to consider anything a liar (bush) says.

[WMliberal]

3. tell him he doesn't know the proper definition of recession

recession is two straight quarters of NEGATIVE growth, NOT declining growth. yes the graph shows that the rate of growth was declining under the end of clinton, but it wasn't until late 2001 that the growth became negative.

[phattyt]

4. Thanks guys, I also found this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A54318-2003Jun30¬Found=true


It essentially states that the recession began in March 2001, two months after Bush took office. Of course, he will give me crap about how Bush's policies didn't have time to cause it so it must be Clinton's fault. Couldn't I argue that investors were wary because of Bush's record of wreckless spending and economic woes while being governor of Texas? I honestly thought that had a large reason to due with the start of the recession.

[The Blue Knight]

5. George Bush never had a problem inheriting anything through his life.

Why does this bother him so?

[Green Lantern]

16. Be careful with this info

the Feds under Bushwa last week were "adjusting" the data for something like the 3rd time, to show there was no recession under Bushwa.

Bushwa said, during the campaign, that the economy was tanking. An early example of his fear tactics at work. He said so and sure enough, the economy tanked.

It's his mess.

No more Bushwa

[alcuno]

17. Don't argue investors.

Instead, argue that the recession ended in December 2001, so Bush owns all the current problems with our economy. His mishandling of the economy by not giving it the kind of stimulus it needed has resulted in this prolonged sluggishness in job creation. Had there been real targeted tax cuts aimed toward people who would SPEND the money on goods and services, it would likely have stimulated job growth. Instead we are left with massive debt that is a consequence of reducing the taxes on the wealthy who apparently stuffed their money beneath their mattresses.

Bush hasn't created even ONE net job. Not a single one. 32,000 jobs last month? It takes nearly 150,000 just to keep up with population growth.

[iceman_419]

6. Here's an idea..

While I can't explain the recession, I can give you a theory which you can use with your friends who are Bush supporters. It is called the Dog Shit Theory. Imagine the economy as a nice piece of chocolate cake. When we had a surplus with Clinton, the cake was nice, moist, and we could put some ice cream on it. The ice cream being the tax cuts. Now instead of having a piece of cake, lets pretend we have a nice piece of dog shit. That we be an economy with a record deficit and other problems. Now can anyon tells me what happens if you put ice cream on top of that dog shit? Yes, you would still have a big pile of dog shit. While this theory may not help, it may give you a laugh which is what everyone needs. Also it seems the way the econ omy is going, it looks like we could be headed into a double dip recession. Economists predicted this before and I think it may come to fruition.

[jeff30997]

7. Let's calm down..Our brother George...

Inherited the earth...God told him,so it must be true...:evilgrin:

[welshTerrier2]

8. don't waste your time

fyi, i'm repeating this here because it seems like this is a dupe thread ...

even top economists won't reach a consensus on this issue ... you end up playing games with semantics and statistics ...

but here are a couple of points your friend will have a tough time with:

1. over an 8 year period, more than 22 million jobs were created ... we were changing the laws to allow foreign labor to come to this country because the labor force could not support the level of economic activity ... does your friend think the labor market in the U.S. was better under Clinton or under bush ? bush has the worst record on jobs since Herbert Hoover ...

2. Clinton left office with a budget surplus ... bush, and his republican controlled house and his republican controlled senate, have managed to run up the largest budget deficits in history ... now your friends might want to point out the high cost of the war in Iraq ... tell your friends that almost none of the monies allocated to rebuild Iraq have been spent ...

3. the cost of healthcare has continued to skyrocket ... bush and his friends passed (after breaking the rules in the house of representatives by bribing and bullying after losing the vote) a medicare bill that is the ultimate giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry ... one of the pillars of this new law prohibits the federal government from trying to obtain the best possible price for drugs ... is this the kind of "conservative" economic policy your friend supports ...

tell him to wake up and understand that democrats want a balanced budget because all that's left in the budget after most of the social programs were gutted are massive corporate welfare programs that lead to things like no-bid contracts, wasteful weapons systems, windfall profits for the energy industry, and giveaways to the bloated pharmaceutical industry ... tell your friend there are no more "welfare queens" ... the democratic party of today is more, not less, economically conservative than the republicans ... the party with "conservative" economic values that values a balanced budget is the democratic party ... the pro-corporate party that is bankrupting the U.S. treasury is the republican party ...

[question everything]

13. Excellent. Thank you n/t

[MODemocrat]

9. Just tell your friend to prove it

Obviously, the friend can't prove it because it is absolutely untrue.
It's not your burden to prove anything, it's all down in black and white. Maybe your friend doesn't read, and listens to the hacks on the radio to get his "information."

[ParisFrance]

11. Clinton created 22 million jobs a year?

[question everything]

14. No, over his 8 years in office n/t

[ParisFrance]

18. Alright...The poster had 22 milion a year before their edit.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

12. Ask him about the surplus we had under Clinton

that disappeared under bush and now we are deeper in the red than we ever have been in history.

You also need to point out to your friend there are more factors to look at besides just GDP, to only look at that is simplistic.

The surplus, btw, was spent on not one, not two, but THREE tax cuts. Fiscally IRRESPONSIBLE. And done in times of war, too. Shame on bush.

[alcuno]

15. Wrong-By definition, a recession is 3 consecutive quarters of falling GDP.

"The National Bureau of Economic Research, which measures recessions and expansions in ways other than GDP, said this week that the economy sank into recession in March after 10 years of growth, the longest expansion on record."

The GDP going down for one quarter does not a recession make. Therefore, the 3 consecutive falls were into 1Q 2001, 2Q 2001, and 3Q 2001. The GDP then picked up which is why economists say that the recession ended in December 2001.

The recession of 9 MONTHS ended 2 and a half years ago. So what's Bush's excuse now?????