Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Since the Heritage Foundation doesn't pay me to spout crap to help the re-election of President Bush, I don't have the time to research this the way the original author did. So I'll just ask a few questions.

Originally posted by bilmore
Economy and Jobs

· Kerry claimed that during the Bush administration, “1.6 million jobs [were] lost.” In truth, the figure is half that. Only 800,000 net jobs have been lost, and even that number is widely expected to be revised downward to 600,000. Considering that 9/11 wiped out 1 million jobs right away, and 1.5 million within a year—all coinciding with the inherited recession and the stock market correcting its irrational exuberance—Bush’s record on this count is, in fact, impressive.

Note that Kerry didn't say "net," and bilmore's source did. Coincidence?

Bush's record -- "impressive" in the sense of being the worst record in 70 years, or is a different word more fitting?

And enough about the excuses about the hand that he was dealt -- given that we are now 2,700,000 jobs below where the White House predicted we'd be when it sold the tax cuts, there can't really be any dispute that the White House's policies have been a collosal failure in the jobs department, right?

[QUOTE]· Kerry: “He’s the only president to have incomes of families go down for the last three years.” According to official U.S. Commerce Department figures, per-capita after-tax income is up 6% since December 2000—and that’s not even counting the results from the economic growth of 2004.

Is it possible that Kerry was talking about real income (after inflation), and that bilmore's source is conveniently ignoring inflation?

· Repeating a populist—and untrue—line from his stump speeches, Kerry said, “The jobs the president is creating pay $9,000 less than the jobs that we’re losing.” This sounds like a devastating indictment, and it plays right into the urban legend that disappearing manufacturing jobs are replaced by burger-flippers. According to the nonpartisan FactCheck.org, “Higher-paid occupations, like managers (who can be in any industry) and health professionals, are growing faster.” This claim is largely based on Federal Reserve of Chicago study released last month.

But this isn't responsive, is it? Without supporting evidence, bilmore's source calls Kerry's statement an urban legend, and then shifts to talk about rates of increase instead. (Think about it this way -- the fastest growing counties tend to be those with the smallest population, while larger counties add more population, but aren't growing as fast.)

· In perhaps the most flagrant lie of the night, Kerry charged, “Under President Bush, the middle class has seen their tax burden go up and the wealthiest’s tax burden has gone down. Now that’s wrong.” No, Kerry’s wrong. The average family of four earning $40,000 has seen an average tax reduction of $1,900. (Bush said $1,700 in the debate.) Either way, that constitutes a staggering 90% reduction from their previous income tax burden. And with the creation of the new 10% bracket, every person paying income taxes has received a tax cut. With respect to the other side of the class warfare argument, the top 1% now pays a slightly greater share of the overall tax burden than before.

More mendacity: Bilmore's source restricts the question to "income taxes," but that's not what Kerry said, is it?

Kerry stated flatly, “I have a plan to cover all Americans.” The nonpartisan Lewin Group (which was cited by Bush) calculated that Kerry’s plan would cover only 25.2 million out of 45 million uninsured Americans. As President Bush noted during the debate, the Lewin Group also found that the 10-year price tag would be $1.2 trillion, roughly double the cost estimated by the Kerry camp—which would cover barely half the number of people Kerry claims it would.

I don't know the details of Kerry's plan, so RT has my proxy on the first part of this one. On the second, I note only that Bush seemed to think that Kerry's plan involved providing health care to all, gratis, so perhaps he's not the most credible source on which to base an empirical attack on it?

· Without batting an eyelash, a dour Kerry pronounced, “Health-care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent.” Except, they haven’t. It’s not entirely clear what constitutes “health care costs,” but it is clear that health insurance premiums have not risen anywhere near that amount. The worst-case statistic, as calculated by the ultra-liberal Families USA (an organ of Big Labor), health insurance premiums have risen by 36 percent since 2000.

If bilmore's source doesn't understand what Kerry was saying, how can he debunk it? Perhaps by addressing health-insurance premiums instad of costs?

· Pulling a page from the Clinton handbook, Kerry said, “Five million Americans have lost their health insurance in this country.” In fairness to Kerry, this is an accurate statistic—but also incredibly misleading. Because of population growth, the percentage of the population that is uninsured is the same as it was in 1996 (15.6%), and below the level it was in 1998 (16.3%).

Is it not odd that the inconvenient fact of population appears down here in the discussion of health-care coverage to mitigate the number of people losing health care, but is ignored up above in the discussion of jobs?

Is it not odd that this author said nothing about the percentage of the population that was uninsured in 2000? Is Kerry running against Bill Clinton?

· Although not challenged by Bush afterward, Kerry threw out an eye-popping—and entirely fictional—figure. The Massachusetts liberal, when discussing the provision in the Medicare prescription drug bill that prohibits the federal government from negotiating with the drug companies, charged that this would cause a “$139 billion windfall profit to the drug companies coming out of your pockets.” The accountants behind the Academy Awards, Price Waterhouse Coopers, found that the impact on drug companies’ profits would be negligible or even negative.

Can anyone say with a straight face that preventing the government from negotiating with drug companies might cost the drug companies money and in any event won't earn them profits? Can we just call it the Hackitage Foundation?

In rattling off a litany of problems allegedly caused by Bush, Kerry claimed, “tuitions have gone up 35 percent.” Actually, what students pay has gone down. From a June 28 cover story in the right-wing rag USA Today: “What students pay on average for tuition at public universities has fallen by nearly one-third since 1998.”

Did Kerry talk only about public universities? And does anyone here live in a world in which college tuitions have been dropping? (Not in California they haven't.)