Bush: A Failure on the Economy

    That headline is not a shocker for most of us. But, here's a concise summation of what our friends at the Economic Policy Institute:

President Bush has noted that 2 million jobs were created over the course of 2005, and that we have added 4.6 million jobs since the decline in jobs ended in May 2003. This is not evidence that the tax cuts are working. When the third round of tax cuts passed in 2003, one of the Bush administration's major selling points was the claim that the economy would create 5.5 million jobs from July 2003 through the end of 2004--almost one and a half million more jobs than would be expected in a normal recovery.

Instead, only 2.4 million jobs were created, 1.7 million less than the number we were told to expect with no tax cut. Job growth remains abnormally slow. Last year's 2 million new jobs repre- sented a gain of only 1.5%. With normal growth, we would have created 4.6 million jobs last year.

    EPI's report deals with a broader assessment of the Bush economic record.