Monday, July 26, 2010

Sherrod Brown: It was even worse than you figured

THE PLAIN DEALER has set up its own version of a truth squad by subjecting the words of politicians to what will henceforth be known as a Truth-O-Meter. That's a rather ambitious undertaking inasmuch as pols aren't necessarily the silent types and in today's heated political culture are likely to say things today that they will deny tomorrow.

The first subject to undergo testing in absentia was Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who told Rachel Maddow that 22 million jobs were created under President Clinton, but only 3 million during President Bush's two terms. "The quantitative claims seemed worth checking,"wrote Stephen Koff, the PD's Washington bureau chief.

In checking out those lopsided figures, Koff wrote that Brown erred because Clinton's record was even better, and Bush's much worse:
"In doing so we found a surprise: Brown was wrong - but not in a way he's likely to mind. No fan of President George W. Bush , Brown grossly understated the poor job growth that occurred on Bush's watch.

"The comparison should have been this: Job growth through Clinton' s two terms was 22.7 million. Through Bush's two terms, it was 1.1 million."
Does anybody think that the Democratic senator won't be more than happy to revise his figures the next time the issue comes up?


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There must be some way that Andrew Breitbart and FOX News can play cut and paste with these figures and come up with a different outcome.

ChrisChristieFan84 said...

Someone should ask Sherrod Brown what Democrats are waiting for if they are so great at creating jobs? They won Congress in '06 and the presidency in '08 and the unemployment rate continues to climb. I think most Americans are smart enough to know that government doesn't create jobs, the private sector does. In other words, the boom of the 1990's was more Bill Gates than Bill Clinton.

Fareed Zakaria had a great piece
in the Washington Post about how Obama's economic policies are hurting job creation. It mentioned how Obamacare, cap & trade, financial regulation, and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are creating a great deal of uncertainty for businesses. And with an uncertain future, those businesses would rather sit on their cash than take the risk of investing heavily in new workers.

I can't wait until we vote these clowns out......

Grumpy Abe said...

I thought the point was that Clinton had a far better - far, far better - jobs record than Bush. You guys keep sliding off the page. And now you have taken Bush with you. Pay attention!
!

Mencken said...

The Dow dropped 44% during the last 15 months of Bush's presidency. That downward spiral became a house warming gift from Bush to Obama.... and the rest of us.