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Promesas, promesas

Autor: Bob Herbert

Fecha: 16/2/2004

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: New York Times

Promises, Promises

One of the main reasons for the decline in President Bush's credibility is the disconnect between the rosy economic scenarios his administration keeps touting and the much more dismal real-life experience of millions of American families.

Mr. Bush likes to say, "America's economy is strong and getting stronger." He recently boasted, "Since May 2003 we have seen the economy grow at its fastest pace in nearly 20 years." He predicted that prosperity would soon "reach every corner of America."

The president needs to get out more. He could visit the working men and women across the state of South Carolina who have watched the factories and the mills close and their jobs vanish like lights in a blackout. He could chat with the people lining up at soup kitchens and food pantries from Harlem to Oklahoma and beyond. He could take a tour of the Pacific Northwest or Silicon Valley, listening to families that have been devastated by the information technology bust and the outsourcing of high-tech jobs.

When the labor secretary, Elaine Chao, was questioned on CNN about the disappointing jobs report for January (112,000 jobs were created when 150,000 had been anticipated), she said: "Well, the stock market is, after all, the final arbiter. And the stock market was very strong this morning in reaction to the news that we have just received."

She was outdone in tone-deafness just a few days later by N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, who gave a thumbs up to outsourcing, including the outsourcing of skilled higher-wage jobs.

After an outcry from Republican politicians — including the speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert — who have been hearing from constituents filled with anxiety about employment, a chastened Mr. Mankiw beat a very public retreat. He said in a letter to Mr. Hastert that "my lack of clarity left the wrong impression that I praised the loss of U.S. jobs."

No amount of political mumbo jumbo can change the fact that the employment situation in the U.S. is grim, and the public is growing weary of the administration's repeated promises that boatloads of jobs are just around the corner. (Any boats with jobs on them are heading overseas.)

This recovery has been the weakest on record in terms of job growth. The Economic Policy Institute has found, counterintuitively, that upscale workers have been among those especially hard hit, particularly in the area of long-term unemployment.

"In all recessions, the least educated have suffered disproportionately," the institute said in a report. "However, the current recession and weak recovery are unique in the extent to which workers with substantial education are also economic victims."

The simple truth is that the Bush administration has been wrong, wrong, wrong in its job creation projections, and that pattern appears to be continuing.

A joint study released last week by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that "actual employment levels in recent years have fallen far below administration forecasts" and that "it is quite unlikely that the administration's [current] target will be reached."

Back when it was hyping its tax cut plan, the administration predicted that 5.5 million jobs would be created in the 18 months from July 2003 to the end of this year. The study noted that in the first seven months of that period, only 296,000 jobs have been created — just 5 percent of the administration's projection.

Working Americans are caught in a terrific squeeze. Jobs are not being created in substantial numbers. The slow pace of job growth has dampened wage growth. Millions of Americans are underemployed, working at jobs for which they are overqualified, or working part time because they can't find full-time work, and so forth. Benefits are being scaled back. And the shipment of upscale jobs overseas is expected to accelerate.

This is all happening in an expansion. What can we expect from the next recession?

The president is in serious political trouble in large part because he has not come up with any credible proposals for dealing with these issues, which go to the very heart of the American way of life.