Though the party in power isn't usually to blame for a recession, it gets blamed anyway. Voters usually punish a party if it is unlucky enough to be the one in control when economic times turn rough. If the upcoming election hinged solely on the state of the sputtering economy, Barack Obama would win going away. The economic news through most of this year has been generally grim. With the unemployment percentage inching up recently because of sizable layoffs, it is now pretty clear the US is now in a recession regardless of whether the current malaise fully fits the exact definition of one. Though the economy is worsening, for much of the middle class and poor the current rough patch doesn't look much different than the entirety of the Bush years. And as much as Bush and the Republicans would want us to believe the Bush tax cuts propelled the county into a period of prosperity, the reality is more sobering. During the Bush years, fabulous wealth has been amassed. Unfortunately, most of that wealth has found its way to the most affluent of Americans. Even during the best of the Bush years, the economy never really fired on all cylinders.
The tepid performance of the economy throughout the Bush years has been underreported. After a series of generous tax cuts, job creation has been decidedly mediocre. The problem with the Bush approach is it had only one strategy...cutting taxes. Yet with those tax cuts have come stagnant wages for most, increasing ranks of the impoverished, and fewer people with health insurance. The Bush approach has been to slash taxes and stand aside and let the economy hum. If the intention had been to foster a strong economy that promotes gains for most Americans, then the Bush plan must be considered an utter failure. This exposes a sobering truth about the shaky premise of trickle down economics. Money can be thrown at corporations and affluent people, but there is no guarantee the moneyed elite will do anything productive with it. It would be wrong to say the Bush tax cuts haven't had any effect at all on the economy, but it would be equally wrong to suggest the tax cuts have spawned a robust economy that is working for most Americans. What the tax cuts have done is send the federal budget deficit soaring and produce the most sizable wealth gap since right before the Great Depression.
When the Bush tax cuts didn't trigger a rash of hiring and a surge of innovation, how did Bush react? By doing nothing, of course. Why didn't Bush try something else? Because the point of the tax cuts were the cuts themselves. I'm sure Bush wouldn't have minded if a booming economy had coincided with lower taxes. But it didn't seem to bother him much that the results of his tax cuts didn't translate into a discernible improvement in the lives of most Americans. There also is an argument to be made that the unimpressive economic conditions that have held sway during much of the Bush years would have been worse had it not been for aggressive moves by the Federal Reserve Board. And guess what the Fed's bold slashing of interest rates led to? That's right...the housing bubble that is now popping. So let's dispense with the fallacy that the Bush tax cuts led to good economic times. Economic activity during the reign of Bush was heightened somewhat because of bargain basement interest rates and rampant fraudulent practices in the mortgage industry(that have recently come to light), but even with that help the economy treaded water mostly without most Americans sharing in whatever gains were being realized. The point of this is to argue the Bush years aren't just ending with an economic thud, they have been throughout something of an economic dud. And with McCain proposing much of the same, why would anyone expect things to be any different if he were elected President?
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