Republican Economics

It amazes me that the Republicans are thought of as the party that has the ideas to grow our economy when the exact opposite is true and easily proven. As this article in the Washington Post shows, under Bush, yes there was expansion, but it was in the bubble sectors and does not count. In fact we are watching every gain given back... from housing prices, to jobs, to the stock market, it was all an illusion.


The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father.
Bush and his aides are quick to point out that they oversaw 52 straight months of job growth in the middle of this decade, and that the economy expanded at a steady clip from 2003 to 2007. But economists, including some former advisers to Bush, say it increasingly looks as if the nation's economic expansion was driven to a large degree by the interrelated booms in the housing market, consumer spending and financial markets. Those booms, which the Bush administration encouraged with the idea of an "ownership society," have proved unsustainable.