TOO BAD EVEN KARL ROVE DIDN'T NOTICE (via Kevin Whited):

Bush's Real Record (INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, 1/31/2007)

Remember that first bleak week, way back in January 2001? The economy was in a free fall, with job growth having peaked in mid-summer 2000. During Bush's first quarter in office, the economy actually shrank.

This wasn't surprising, given the Fed had been ratcheting up interest rates for two years and the stock market had just suffered its biggest meltdown. Americans took a $7 trillion hit from that debacle, and some feared we might even slide into a depression.

Then came the first attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, killing 3,000 people, costing $100 billion in direct costs to the economy and untold billions more in indirect costs, and damaging the national psyche. People stopped flying and buying. They cocooned.

It was the worst first year for a president since FDR. But Bush turned a potential disaster into one of the success stories of the post-World War II era. Yet few credit him for it.

His three tax cuts pushed 5 million mostly low-income families off the tax rolls and substantially shifted the tax burden toward the rich. Despite harsh criticism, the cuts revived the economy. [...]

Since Bush's tax cuts took effect in mid-2003:

• Real gross domestic product is up to $1.33 trillion, or 12.6%.

• Existing businesses have hired 5.9 million workers (not counting the millions of jobs entrepreneurs have created).

• Corporate profits have soared 91% to $1.6 trillion.

• Tax receipts have leapt $503 billion, or roughly 1.1 percentage points of GDP, refuting the notion the tax cuts "caused" deficits.

And thanks to rebounding stock prices and huge gains in home values, Americans' total wealth has soared 39% to $54 trillion -- the biggest expansion ever.

Even without the Ownership Society, liberalizing the Middle East, conservative court appointments, 100 million new citizens, and all the rest, the performance of the economy alone guarantees Mr. Bush a spot in the upper echelon of U.S. presidents.

MORE:
Jobs growth slows but remains strong in U.S. (Jeremy W. Peters, February 2, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

U.S. businesses added a net 111,000 jobs last month, a pullback from the pace of previous months but still enough to sustain the recent trend of steady strength in the labor markets, the government reported Friday. [...]

In its monthly report, the Labor Department also said Friday that job growth was stronger in October, November and December than its preliminary figures had shown.

Wages for the average American rose at a slightly lower pace in January, climbing 4 percent in the last year, compared with a 4.2 percent yearly rise in December.

U.S. Consumer Confidence Index Rises to 2-Year High (Shobhana Chandra, 2/02/07, Bloomberg)

Confidence among U.S. consumers rose to the highest in two years last month as gasoline prices eased and the job market expanded.

The Reuters/University of Michigan's final index of sentiment increased to 96.9 in January from 91.7 in December. [...]

The Michigan survey's expectations index, which some economists view as an indicator of future consumer spending, rose to 87.6, also a two-year high, from 81.2 in December.

The gauge of current conditions, which reflects Americans' perceptions of their financial situation and whether it's a good time to buy big-ticket items like cars, increased to 111.3, the highest since July 2005, from 108.1.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2007 12:24 PM