A closer look at Bush's record on jobs

Steve Benen, Talking Points Memo: In response to the latest monthly employment report, the White House released a "fact sheet" yesterday bragging about the president's record on job creation. It led Paul Krugman to take a closer look at Bush's numbers as compared to his predecessor's.

Over the whole of the Clinton administration, the economy added 22.7 million jobs -- 237,000 per month.

Over the whole of the Bush administration to date, the economy added only 5.8 million jobs -- 72,000 per month.

But, the White House says, the first two years of Bush's presidency shouldn't count because there was a recession and 9/11 affected the economy. It's only fair, the president's supporters say, to start counting since August 2003, and forget about his first 32 months in office.

Fine, Krugman said. Bush's monthly average, using the cherry-picked timeline, still trails Clinton, 172,000 per month to 237,000 per month.

Krugman concludes, "Did I mention that the Clinton job boom followed an, um, increase in taxes?"

I'd only add that U.S. News recently asked Rudy Giuliani about this in an interview about economic policy. The magazine said, "The Democrats are going to say, 'We raised taxes in the '90s, cut the deficit, and the economy boomed.' Why not try and rerun the '90s instead of cutting taxes?"

Giuliani responded, "Because we have actually done more job creation by lowering taxes than by raising taxes."

Reality shows otherwise.