Is Bush to Blame for the Economy?

By Dean Baker, The American Prospect

Last summer, President Bush told the American people that “the American economy is the envy of the world.” He continued, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong…. Job creation is strong. Real after-tax wages are on the rise. Inflation is low.” None of this was exactly true then, but it is certainly not true now. When President Bush signed the stimulus package he finally acknowledged what the rest of us already knew: The economy is in real trouble. The collapse of the housing bubble is throwing the economy into a recession, and quite possibly a very severe recession. For most workers this means that the economic situation is about to go from bad to worse.

There has been a myth spread by folks like The New York Times that the economy had been performing very well under President Bush, but that he wasn’t getting proper credit because of public anger over Iraq. While pleasing to the ears of Bush supporters, this is a myth without foundation.

At the most basic level, contrary to the myth, growth has actually been very weak under President Bush. Here is the ranking of growth by presidential administrations since 1960:

Kennedy-Johnson: 5.2%
Clinton: 3.6%
Reagan: 3.4%
Carter: 3.4%
Nixon-Ford: 2.7%
Bush II: 2.6%
Bush I: 1.9%

President Bush only manages to beat out his father, and even this distinction may not hold when the final numbers are in. These data only run through the third quarter of 2007. If we fall into a recession and Bush ends his term with five quarters of near-zero growth, then Bush II could even fall behind Bush I in the growth category.

But growth is only a small part of the story. As has been widely publicized, the Bush-era deficits reversed the effects of the deficit reduction from the Clinton years. We will almost certainly end the Bush years with a higher debt-to-gross domestic product ratio than we had at the start of the Clinton presidency. That is not a disaster, but the next administration will not have the luxury of allowing the debt to increase in the same way.

(Original Article)