Voting Issues: The Economy, Jobs and National Security

If the November election comes down to just these three issues, it should be a slam dunk for Democrats, whether running for President, Senator or Representative. Certainly these aren't the only areas of weakness for the Republicans. The Bush administration has done "more damage to our environmental protections than any other in U.S. history," favoring the rights of polluters over people. They've alienated us from the world community, except for a handful of nations which supported our invasion of Iraq, including Great Britain, Australia, Spain, Poland and Palau. (Even in the UK and Australia, 70% of the public opposed the invasion without UN support.) By stifling dissent, they've cracked down on free speech and freedom of assembly, rights so fundamental to American democracy that they were placed in the first ammendment to our Constitution. They've not only allowed, but actively encouraged the privatization of schools and prisons, despite evidence of privatization's dangers.

Neverless, it looks like the economy, jobs and national security are the three issues which Republicans will be running on, and the issues which they feel most confident about.

Granted, the economy is recovering, and will likely continue to grow through 2004. But how much credit should Bush take, and what will be the long term cost of his tax cuts for the rich?
Speaking Monday morning in Tampa, Florida, Bush argued that his tax cuts are helping the economy and warned that Democrats would endanger the country's fiscal health by raising taxes.

Bush addressed workers at a window-and-door manufacturing plant. It's his 19th visit to Florida as president. He told the workers that the country is recovering from its economic downturn and that the recovery is due to his own policies.
Just last month, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told Lesley Stahl of CBS' 60 Minutes:
“Yes, well, in the last quarter the growth rate was 8.2 percent. It was terrific,” says O’Neill. “I think the tax cut made a difference. But without the tax cut, we would have had 6 percent real growth, and the prospect of dealing with transformation of Social Security and fundamentally fixing the tax system. And to me, those were compelling competitors for, against more tax cuts.”
So in exchange for 2 percent more growth, we gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Americans who didn't need the money, rather than fix Social Security? Furthermore, current economic growth is not producing jobs, or job security. It is increasing buying power, thanks to a lagging dollar. But what good is buying power if you don't have a job?

Bush&Co say that jobs are coming, just give it some time. How long? This administration has seen nearly three million jobs lost on its watch. At the same time, Bush has received massive donations from corporations that have moved offshore to avoid paying federal taxes, and shipped jobs overseas for good.
The Bush administration is overly upbeat in predicting that 2.6 million new jobs will be created this year, private economists say.

The economy has lost 2.2 million payroll jobs since January 2001, giving Bush the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover.

"When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically," the president's report says. "This allows the United States to devote its resources to more productive purposes."

"President Bush's tax and trade policies have fueled this trend in outsourcing, which has clearly contributed to job losses in our economy over the past three years," Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., senior Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee, said at a hearing Tuesday. "President Bush stands idly by as jobs continue to take flight from the U.S., and now we know why - it's part of his economic plan."

The White House's previous job growth predictions have been off the mark. Last year, it forecast 1.7 million new jobs for 2003. The economy lost 439,000.

The administration estimated that 100,000 payroll jobs would be lost in 2002, when the economy was emerging from recession. The country lost 1.45 million jobs that year.

American factories have lost 3 million jobs in the last 42 months since a peak in July 2000.

Ultimately, investment in overseas jobs will help the U.S. economy by providing cheaper goods and services, economists say.

"There's nothing wrong with exporting jobs, as long as you're importing an equal number of jobs," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. "The problem is, right now we're not doing that."
And now we learn that military contractors, and not just Halliburton, are getting jobs in Iraq even while they owe taxpayers for evading taxes.
We all know that Halliburton is gouging taxpayers--according to the Pentagon, Vice President Cheney's old company overcharged the US government by as much as $61 million for fuel in Iraq. But now we learn that more than 27,000 military contractors, or about one in nine, are evading taxes and still continuing to win new government business.

According to the General Accounting Office, these tax cheats owed an estimated $3 billion at the end of 2002, mainly in Social Security and other payroll taxes, including Medicare, that were diverted for business or personal use instead of being sent to the government. (Lesser amounts were owed in income taxes).
Which brings us to national security. Bush has managed to pulloff the unthinkable: his war on terrorism has managed to cultivate the very thing it aims to fight, while allowing corporations to make millions by overcharging American citizens. Does Bush's "shoot first" foreign policy make Americans safer at home and abroad, safer now than we were before September 11, 2001?

Despite the growing evidence of Bush's failure on these three fundamental issues, it's going to be a tough election. But that's an issue for another post.