9/11 Ben: Playing the economic blame game

Since last Friday's announcement that the unemployment rate has risen from 4.5 percent to 4.9 percent, politicians have been scrambling to deflect and place blame for the slowing economy. Even though short-term fiscal policy has little effect on the economy and the current federal budget was signed into law before he took office, President Bush has been the target of increasing criticism over the economy. It's thus no surprise that he and fellow Republicans have been looking to preemptively deflect blame onto the Clinton administration, while Democrats are starting a new offensive to lay blame squarely on the administration?s shoulders.

Evidence of the Republican line came on Friday, when President Bush gave an address responding to the unemployment numbers. "[T]oo many people are losing their jobs as a result of a slowdown that began when [Vice-President] Dick [Cheney] and I were campaigning across our country last summer," Bush stated during his address, attempting to make it clear that current slowdown began before he took office and, thus, is not "his."

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott echoed that line yesterday when he appeared on ABC's "This Week," stating that "the downturn in the economy started 13, 14 months ago, and President Bush, Vice President Cheney, talked about that fact last December."

Lott's comments came in response to a question on an offensive Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle launched within moments of his appearance on "This Week." In response to the first question, which concerned the budget, Daschle responded, "[I]t is [Bush's] budget, his tax cut and his economy." Later on, Daschle implied that Bush was given a perfect economy andsomehow managed to destroy it with his tax cut "This president inherited the single best economy that any president has inherited in--in recent history," Daschle stated. "And clearly, when you make the U-turn that the president did last spring, you can expect a U-turn in results. That's exactly what happened."

Daschle's spinning is the more egregious in this case. He blatantly dissembles by ignoring the slowdown in the economy that started under President Clinton and attempts to blame the Bush tax cut, which has largely not taken effect, for the slowdown. Republicans, however, are oversimplifying when they argue that the starting point of the sharp reduction in growth was last year, since things have gotten much worse this year (regardless of whether Bush's policies had anything to do with it).The most egregious aspect of all this spin, however, is the implication that the $10 trillion U.S. economy's performance can be reduced to one president or party. While fiscal policy matters, the current bust is primarily an effect of overinvestment and speculation in the technology boom, and nothing Presidents Bush or Clinton have done caused that or could have stopped it. That's the issue politicians should be talking about, instead of laying blame that doesn't exist.

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Related Links:
-Spinning the Social Security surplus (Bryan Keefer, 9/10)
-Scheer propaganda on a claimed recession (Brendan Nyhan, 8/28)

9/11/2001 01:28:39 AM EST |

9/10 column: Spinning the Social Security Surplus

By Bryan Keefer

By pledging to "protect" the Social Security surplus, Democrats and Republicans have boxed themselves in on the budget. Now, instead of a debate over whether and how to use the surplus, it's a race to see who can frame the debate in the most advantageous way. (read the whole column)

9/10/2001 06:21:00 AM EST |

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