Political games with fiscal stimulus lags

There's more than a little irony in Republicans asking "WHERE ARE THE JOBS?" just a few months after the stimulus bill was enacted (via Paul Krugman). Remember, President Bush's 2001 tax cut was sold as a recession-fighter, but payroll jobs declined steadily until mid-2003 (partly as a result of the economic shock associated with the 9/11 terrorist attacks). The White House solution at the time was to disappear the 2001 tax cut and use a junk chart to falsely attribute the eventual uptick in jobs and employment to Bush's second tax cut, which was enacted in May 2003 and had not had time to have a significant effect.

Comments

[David]

It would be interesting if Brendan were to reproduce from his link the 2005 chart showing the effects of the Bush tax, and to show alongside it a similar chart for 2009.

Brendan's own chart at his cite shows that a month or two after Bush signed his recession-fighting bill the jobless rate began to decline. Furthermore, it peaked at a bit above 6%. And, as Brendan points out, the Bush economy had to cope with the effects of the 9/11 attacks. The unemployment rate continued to improve for the next two years.

Today, almost three months after enactment of the the Obama/Pelosi "stimulus" bill, the unemployment rate continues to skyrocket and has reached 9.4%.

I hope things will turn around soon, but, so far it looks like Bush's approach worked and Obama's didn't.

[rone]

Your faith-based approach to economics and politics is stellar, David.