Bush's economic blinders

9/6/2003

IT'S UNFAIR to blame President Bush for the difficulties that followed the bursting of the high-tech bubble in 2001, but he has refused to adjust his policies to help the millions of people thrown out of work as a result. Unless he changes course promptly, he will carry a heavy burden of economic neglect into the 2004 presidential campaign. According to Labor Department figures released yesterday, 6.1 percent of the workforce was unemployed last month. This figure has edged down only slightly in the last few months and mirrors the rate in early 1994, when the economy was pulling itself out of the early 1990s recession. But it still represents an increase of nearly 3 million people out of work since Bush became president.

In the 2000 campaign, Bush advocated tax cuts to sop up some of the enormous budget surpluses expected to be generated throughout the decade. The tax cut bill as it passed Congress in 2001, while high-tech stocks were imploding, favored wealthier Americans, as did the second round of cuts Bush signed into law this year. Surpluses have been replaced by deficits, with no end in sight.

To counter a decline in manufacturing jobs, the president this week announced plans to designate an assistant secretary of commerce -- a jobs czar -- for this economic sector. The decline is a long-term trend, however, and will not be slowed by a single appointment. It would be better for Bush to propose extensive retraining programs to move workers into occupations where jobs are more plentiful.

The federal government does not track poverty on the same monthly basis as unemployment, but the Census Bureau reported this week that 1.4 million more people dropped below the poverty line in 2002. That means 12.4 percent of the US population, or 34.8 million people, had incomes that were far less than needed for life's necessities.

A president concerned about poor people would push for Congress to offer them the same child tax credit that has already benefited millions of more affluent families this year. Bush puts a higher priority on making his other tax cuts permanent.

The United States, for all its troubles, remains the world's most formidable economy. A president ought to be judged by whether he has harnessed that power to help Americans most set back by the end of the boom. CORRECTION -- The name of Antonia Pollak, acting commissioner of Boston's Parks and Recreation Department, was misspelled in editorials appearing on April 4, 2003, and Sept. 4, 2003.