"After enduring months of a 'jobless' recovery, George Bush's team was quick to claim credit earlier this year when the pace of job growth finally accelerated," The Economist reported in August 2004. "John Snow, the Treasury Secretary, argued that the creation of over 300,000 new jobs in March 'clearly demonstrated' that Mr Bush's tax cuts were working. These tax cuts, he suggested, were 'driving job creation'. The administration did not simply claim that the huge fiscal expansion of the past three years had helped cushion America's recession (which would have been correct). It went much further. Tax cuts, intoned every Bush official, were the elixir behind the jobs recovery.
"Now that the payroll figures have weakened, the Bush team is squirming. White House aides offer a slew of reasons why the statistics which just a few months ago 'clearly demonstrated' the wisdom of Mr Bush's economic policies should now be discounted. The president himself pretends the bad news simply does not exist. 'We have a strong economy and it's getting stronger,' he claimed only hours after the jobless figures were released on August 6th."
Sources
The Economist, Aug 12th 2004
