John Spratt: “the administration has devoted a lot of energy to touting the successes of the economy, particularly with respect to the…”

“the administration has devoted a lot of energy to touting the successes of the economy, particularly with respect to the job statistics, as justification for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. But let's look at the record. When President Clinton took office in January 1993, there were 109.7 million jobs in the national economy in the work force. When he left office in January of 2001, there were 132.5 million jobs. That means that during the 8 years of the Clinton administration, there was a gain of 22.8 million jobs. These were the jobs created during the Clinton administration at a time when we brought the budget to balance, making the bottom line of the budget every year better and better and better to the point where we had a surplus in 1998. Now, compare that job gain, 22.8 billion to what has happened during the Bush administration. When President Bush took office in January 2001 there were 132.5 million jobs in the economy, according to the BLS. By January of 2006, 2 months ago, the economy had a total of 134.6 million jobs. That is an increase of 2.1 million jobs, versus 22 million jobs created during the Clinton administration. No comparison. Stark contrast. What is even worse is the fact that the Bush administration has seen most of its job gains of more than 50 percent occur in the public sector, not in the private sector. The tax cuts that have led to the deficit did not generate the jobs that were proposed or projected in the private sector. Far from it.…”