Former President George W. Bush schooled far left mouthpiece Matt Lauer on basic economics on today’s Today show.
NewsBusters reported:
Bush should have reminded him that that unemployment rate is currently holding at 9.6%.
Here’s the transcript, via NewsBusters:
GEORGE W. BUSH: Well first of all, you know, it’s too bad they call them the Bush tax cuts, they might have a better chance of being extended if they were the Lauer tax cuts.
(Laughter)
LAUER: Probably not gonna happen.
BUSH: Here’s, here’s the deal. Most new jobs are created by small businesses. Many small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax level because of how the are organized. For example, sub chapter S corporations or limited partnerships. Therefore, if you raise the top rate you’re taxing job creators.
LAUER: But we’ve been living under that system for seven years now and we’ve seen incredibly slow growth in jobs. So why should we continue down that path?
(Video after the break)
BUSH: I don’t accept that premise. For 53 or nearly 53 weeks we had consecutive job growth. The longest period in, one of the longest periods in economic history. You gotta remember, let me put this, put this in perspective. I come to office, there is a dotcom bubble burst. Then 9/11 comes and the country is in severe economic hardship. The tax cuts, in my judgment, stimulated an economic vitality and a lot of jobs were created. Now the question is, how do we create them? And part of the debate is should government try to create the jobs or should the private sector try to create the jobs. My argument is keeping taxes low will encourage the private sector to create jobs.
THE TRUTH – BUSH TAX CUTS GREW THE ECONOMY.
During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.
Not only were more jobs lost after the 9-11 attacks in 2001 than in the 2008 market crash, but more jobs were created by President Bush’s pro-business policies and tax cuts than by the Obama-Pelosi “spend your way to hell” Keynesian failure.
