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The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.
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... And rightly or wrongly, voters still judge presidents and their parties largely by the economy's performance during their watch. In that assessment, few measures do more than the Census data to answer the threshold question of whether a president left the day to day economic conditions of average Americans better than he found it.
If that's the test, today's report shows that Bush flunked on every relevant dimension-and not just because of the severe downturn that began last year.
Consider first the median income. When Bill Clinton left office after 2000, the median income-the income line around which half of households come in above, and half fall below-stood at $52,500 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars). When Bush left office after 2008, the median income had fallen to $50,303. That's a decline of 4.2 per cent.
That leaves Bush with the dubious distinction of becoming the only president in recent history to preside over an income decline through two presidential terms, notes Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The median household income increased during the two terms of Clinton (by 14 per cent, as we'll see in more detail below), Ronald Reagan (8.1 per cent), and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (3.9 per cent). As Mishel notes, although the global recession decidedly deepened the hole-the percentage decline in the median income from 2007 to 2008 is the largest single year fall on record-average families were already worse off in 2007 than they were in 2000, a remarkable result through an entire business expansion. "What is phenomenal about the years under Bush is that through the entire business cycle from 2000 through 2007, even before this recession...working families were worse off at the end of the recovery, in the best of times during that period, than they were in 2000 before he took office," Mishel says.
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Bush's record on poverty is equally bleak. ... Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008.
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The story is similar again for access to health care. When Clinton left office, the number of uninsured Americans stood at 38.4 million. By the time Bush left office that number had grown to just over 46.3 million, an increase of nearly 8 million or 20.6 per cent. ...
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| Bush – 2008 | Clinton – 2000 | Bush 1992 |
Median Income | $50,303 | $52,500 | |
| 4.2 % Worse | + 14 % Better | 3.2% Worse |
Poverty | 39.8 m | 31.6 m | 38 m |
| 26.1 % Worse 17% Worse PRIOR to recession | 16.9 % Better | 8.4 % Worse |
Child Poverty | 14.1 m | 11.6 m | 15.3 m |
| 21 % Worse | 24.2 % Better | 7.9 % Worse |
| 13.2 % | 11.3 % | |
Female headed poverty | 31 % | 28.5 % | 39% |
Health Uninsured | 46.3 m | 38.4 m | 38.6 m |
| 20.6% Worse | Even | |
| 15.4 % | 13.7 % | |
Employer Insurance | 58.5 | 64.2% | |
| 8.9% Worse | | |
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