Clinton Claim’s “No job growth” During Bush Presidency

This interview of Bill Clinton is a gold mine. Not only does he claim that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy more than tax cuts, but now he says “I find it amazing that the Republicans who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it, gave us an economic record that was totally bereft of any productive result are now criticizing him for spending money.”

I actually agree with him on some parts of this statement. I’m amazed the Republicans doubled the debt of the country, and I’m ashamed of the economic record Bush and the Republicans gave us during Bush’s presidency. I’m ashamed because Bush and the Republicans ignored conservative principles of limited government, individual freedom, debt-free living, and cutting spending. Instead, they adopted liberal policies or were not vigorous enough in opposing them, which has created the mess we’re in, and which conservatives are not being blamed for. This is why bipartisanship is such a farce. If you defy the left, they blame you for anything wrong that happens. If you go along with them, they blame you for anything wrong that happens. So you might as well defy them.

Just the same, I have a hard time believing the rest of Clinton’s statement, but I’m open to looking at the facts and admitting he’s correct if someone wants to do the research. But here’s why simply comparing January 2000 to December 2008 doesn’t make sense. In January of 2000 the economy was peaking. It was the height of the dot-com boom. But in March 2000 the bubble burst and the economy started tanking. It started recovering mid-2001, but then 9/11 hit, and it really tanked after that. Can you blame Bush for the dot-com crash? Hardly, he was barely done buying sheets for his bed in the White House, and he hadn’t made any major announcements of economic note that prompted the crash. Can you blame him for 9/11? You could, but there’s a much better case to be made for blaming Clinton and his staff. After 9/11 the economy was down for a while, but it was never that bad and it recovered fairly quickly. From 2003-2007 we had quite an economic boom and very low unemployment numbers. But then in 2007 things started to soften, and in 2008 the housing crisis hit, was compounded by the fuel crisis, and here we are.

To compare January 2000 to December 2008 is to compare a peak that would soon vanish to a trough and ignore everything in between. It is also to ignore the performance of the economy in spite of external events. There really is no way to do a true comparison, because we don’t know exactly what somebody else would have done in Bush’s position nor the consequent choices that would have led to. But while it’s difficult to make comparisons, that certainly doesn’t mean we throw reason out the window and make comparisons that are obviously skewed, such as a comparison of January 2000 to December 2008. If things were up at the beginning, then down, then up, then ended up down, does it make sense to ignore the period in the middle when things were up and only compare to the two endpoints?

But if there is any blame to go around, I place it firmly with the liberal ideologies that Bush adopted, and I wholeheartedly throw Bush and the Republicans in the Congress and House under the bus for adopting them. Why do you think Republicans did so poorly in the last two elections? It’s hard to get out and vote when your own party becomes your enemy.