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October 21, 2003

Bushie Promises 200,000 Jobs/Month

Here's the promise.

If Bush doesn't deliver, he should be tossed out of office. (He should be tossed anyways, but one more lie should ice the cake).

Treasury Secretary John Snow has promised a job boom of 200,000 new jobs per month in the next years:

"Everything we know about economics indicates that the sort of economic growth expected for the next year, 3.8 to 4 percent, will translate into two million new jobs from the third quarter of this year to the third quarter of next year," Mr. Snow elaborated. "That's an average of about 200,000 new jobs a month."

In some ways, this is a gutsy move by the administration to promise an exact number of jobs like this over the next year.

It creates a monthly benchmark of success or failure. Let's make sure we all publicize those job creation results each month.

This may go down with "yellowcake" and "read my lips" as suicidal political promises.

Update: Since Bush, even if he meets this goal, will still be the only President in post-WWII America to have a net loss of jobs, this promise could be seen as "lowering the bar" on accountability. This is true, although he had the alternative strategy of just pumping the alternative "household survey" which shows job gains under the Bush Presidency. Where the firm establishment survey shows 2.7 million jobs lost, the household survey shows essentially a flat job picture-- all jobs lost in the early portion of the Bush regime have been regained.

So Treasury Secretary Snow has raised the bar on measurements under the household survey-- it's not a question of arguing between the two surveys, the question is whether the administration can show a 2 million job increase on either or both surveys. It's always dangerous for anyone to lock them into such a prediction-- if they fail, it's a clear benchmark, and even if they make it, critics can always use other benchmarks to criticize them.

So not the smartest move in any case.

Posted by Nathan at October 21, 2003 08:41 AM

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