Bush Credits Tax Cuts for Economic Growth

Okay, people...yet another complaint on the "he said, she said" reporting in our current news environment.

Today, MSNBC reports that "Bush credits tax cuts for growing economy", and explains that Bush squawked about the expectation-beating 207,000 jobs created last month. The fact that the job creations numbers have been oscilating fairly regularly, and on average are unremarkable is conveniently ignored. The only opposing viewpoints related to the tax cuts' efficacy state:

Democrats believe the tax cuts have done little more than drain the U.S. budget and even some Republicans doubt the wisdom of extending them.

Apparently nobody can bother to get off their asses and do some fact-checking, so let me save everyone some time.

Last year, jobwatch.org analyzed the job growth promises on which the "Jobs and Growth Plan" were sold. Extrapolating the promised figures, they found:

This means that, in monthly terms, the CEA projected the economy to generate 228,333 jobs each month even without passage of the “Jobs and Growth Plan,” and 306,111 jobs per month with its passage.

The end result of the tax cuts was that by the end of last year non-farm payroll should have numbered around 136M jobs w/out the tax cuts and about 137.5M with the tax cuts. One more time, that's the number they were predicting at the end of 2004.

Hopping over to the BLS website and looking at the numbers for last month, July 2005, we are told:
Total nonfarm employment rose by 207,000 in July to 133.8 million, seasonally adjusted.
Got that? Non-farm payroll is still around 2 million jobs short of where we should have been 6 months ago with nary a tax cut, and over 3.5 million short of what the tax cuts were supposed to produce.

Huh. Sure doesn't sound like we can really credit the tax cuts for a whole lot to me, now does it? But what's that you say? "The Administration doesn't do Crystal Ball Predictions, or worry about statistics"? "At least the tax cuts are stimulating the private sector to create jobs, and that's what really matters", as the right will surely say.

Well, according to the research done by the Economic Policy Institute, dated Aug 3rd: "Without defense-related spending, private sector would still be in a jobs hole" since 2001. Admittedly, the tax cuts came after 2001, so the comparison is not exactly fair in an apples-to-apples kind of way, but the point is: jobs related to increased defense spending increased by 2.1 million since September of 2001, while private non-defense jobs are down by 1.16 million.

So the evidence tells us: 1. the tax cuts have underperformed the promised job creation numbers, and even the numbers that were predicted without the cuts, and 2. increased government defense spending has wildly outpaced the private sector as a driver of job creation since September of 2001.

Okay, having done the heavy lifting on researching the "tax cuts have done little more than drain the U.S. budget" part of the equation, I provide these for any MSNBC writer who cares to use them, and welcome any meaningful refutations. My answer is; "Bring 'em on".