The real Bush legacy

Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz have a piece appearing in the January 2009 issue of Harper's titled, "The $10 Trillion Hangover - Paying the price for eight years of Bush."

Here are a couple of excerpts:

"In the eight years since George W. Bush took office, nearly every component of the U.S. economy has deteriorated. The nation's budget deficit, trade deficits, and debt have reached record levels. Unemployment and inflation are up, and household savings are down. Nearly 4 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared and, not coincidentally, 5 million more Americans have no health insurance. Consumer debt has almost doubled, and nearly one fifth of American homeowners are likely to owe more in mortgage debt than their homes are actually worth. Meanwhile ... the final price for the war in Iraq is expected to reach at least $3 trillion.

As bad as things are, though, this is just the beginning. The Bush administration not only has depressed the economy and racked up unprecedented debt; it also has made expensive new commitments to the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, to disability compensation and education benefits for veterans, to replenishing the military equipment consumed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and simply to paying the interest of the debt itself."

Bilmes and Stiglitz don't lay all of the blame on Bush, noting how Congress passed "inequitable tax cuts" and went on "spending binges." The housing collapse they lay at the door of the Federal Reserve and other regulators, the mortgage industry and greedy consumers.

"Nonetheless," they say, "the outgoing administration has made a series of unwise economic choices that together will add up to a burdensome legacy."

That's putting it mildly. The situation deserves curses.


In their summary, Bilmes and Stiglitz note that:

"The worst legacy of the past eight years is that despite colossal government spending, most Americans are worse off than they were in 2001. This is because money was squandered in Iraq and given as a tax windfall to America's richest individuals and corporations, rather than spent on such programs as education, infrastructure, and energy independence ... "

What's amazing to me is how the Repugnicans have the gall to suggest that they better serve the common folks than Democrats when history has so clearly confirmed the Repugnican Party is the official organ of the rich and powerful and the corporations they serve.

Bilmes and Stiglitz note that while "...Bush did manage, by way of deficit spending, to grow the economy by 20 percent during his tenure" ... those who benefited were the rich. "Between 2002 and 2006, the wealthiest 10 percent of households saw more than 95 percent of the gains in income. And even within those rarefied strata, the gains tended to be concentrated at the very top. ... And in that same period, corporate profits shot up by 68 percent--more than five times the growth seen in the overall economy."

It was the people at the "center of the income spectrum" that experienced a 1 percent shrinkage in their incomes." The net worth of these people has withered away "as a result of falling home values, higher personal debt, and shrinking savings--factors now being exacerbated by the collapsing stock markets."


Thanks to Bush, the middle income folks will continue to be screwed in the years ahead. Here's why:

"The extraordinary transfer of wealth that has taken place from ordinary households to the super-rich has been made possible by another transfer: borrowing money from future prosperity to pay for current consumption. For example, President Bush provided a much heralded $600 tax rebate to most families in 2001. But once interest rates return to more normal levels, simply servicing the new debt from the Bush years will require those same families to spend more than $2,000 a year, year after year, forever."


All of which brings to mind the irony of McCain and Palin, out on the campaign trail, touting their concern for "Joe the plumber" as if that concern for the middle class represents Republican economic policy. Such is the stuff of Vaudeville - farcical comedy. Nothing, history has proven, over and over again, could be further from the truth!

The truth, which speaks of economic desolation, despair and destitution, is the real Bush legacy!