President Clinton: "My only regret in creating 23 million new jobs is that 2 million of those jobs were for right-wing pundits." That must be why we see 22 million and 21 million, no one knows how many right-wing pundits are actually in the number.
Joking aside, one of Sublime Bloviation’s conclusions to its review of a PolitiFact fact-check on President Clinton's statement above (as stated by Sherrod Brown) is “…it should be obvious that Brown's intended point--that tax cuts do not create jobs--cannot find reasonable support in the Clinton/Bush comparison.”
To expect PolitiFact (PF) to provide “reasonable support” for tax cuts not creating jobs was beyond the scope of their stated purpose: To verify Brown’s quantitative claim of 22 million jobs created during the Clinton years.
It should be noted that this claim is consistent with other PF reporting as well as FactCheck:
“…Clinton saw a gain of nearly 21 million jobs during his tenure (January 1993 - January 2001)…Certainly Clinton deserves some credit for that remarkable economic growth, but just as certainly he can't claim all the credit."
“…How much [credit for creating 22 million jobs] he [Clinton] deserves is a matter of opinion that will probably be debated for years to come.”
Does he want PF to engage in debate? Just the claim that tax cuts create jobs is “badly oversimplified and misleading.”
“…The start and finish of a presidential tenure count as relatively arbitrary points in terms of the implementation of economic policy.” Arbitrary starting and end points? Bryan better write a snarky letter to the Wall Street Journal for its selection bias:
Here’s an excellent take on “tax cuts creating jobs”:
Bryan studiously avoided the comments by Brown preceding the “tax cuts” …“adding the tax cuts to the deficit.”“….The statement that tax cuts create jobs is misleading.
Just because a company can create more jobs doesn’t mean it will or even should. The purpose of business is to earn profit…not to create jobs. From the business perspective, job creation is a means to an end and not an end in itself.
The Bush-era (2000-2008) of deregulation and upper class tax cuts appears to be a Kaldor-Hicks move: the overall US economy (GDP) grew, the number of jobs increased but at a slower rate, and the wealthiest 1% of Americans were the ones who were rewarded. The middle and lower class are actually worse off on average now, with (inflation-adjusted) salaries staying about the same while the cost of living rose.”
… the real impact of tax cuts is widely misunderstood and exaggerated in both directions.”
Sherrod Brown: “Yeah, in some sense, what you‘re missing is you‘re only telling half the story, in this way that not only what they‘re doing probably increases the deficit, and did increase the deficit in the first several years of this decade.”
The role of the deficit in relation to tax cuts should have been included in his argument…this was selection bias on Bryan’s part, being he is admittedly “biased” to the right and did not want to deal with the fact this was a “full flop” by Republicans since Bush was president. So if PF was not framing their argument correctly, Bryan wasn’t being of much help. For PF to do that was even further beyond the scope of the fact-check, and again, getting too ideological.
If Bryan wants to argue that I am making excuses for PolitiFact, perhaps he should quit making excuses for why tax cuts with borrowed money don’t create jobs.
 |
| Comparison of Bush and Clinton presidential terms for employment versus population growth. |
| Date, Title and Link | July 25: Twenty-two million jobs were created during Clinton’s two terms but only 3 million during Bush’s. |
| Who? Affiliation | Sherrod Brown, Democrat |
| Ruling | TRUE |
| Checkers | Stephen Koff (Writer/Researcher),Rich Exner (Researcher), Robert Higgs (Editor) |
| # of Words | 961 |
| # Sources Cited | 6 |
| Argument Summary | PF wanted to verify quantitatively that 22 million jobs were created during Clinton years; that 3 million were created during Bush years; that incomes went up under Clinton and stagnated under Bush. In getting actual numbers, they were better than what Brown reported. |
| Bryan’s Argument | Clinton inherited growing economy; Bush inherited one on verge of recession, etc.; PF used *selection bias* by not considering business cycle; PF *ignored underlying argument* that Brown was actually discussing whether tax cuts create jobs |
| Quick Interpretation | PF should editorialize Republicans instead! |
| My criticism: | What Bryan wants PF to do is just as highly debatable and subjective, i.e., he wants PF to engage in selection bias *charitable* to Bryan’s political viewpoint |
| Guidelines (PF excuses) | (1) That’s not what PF stated it was looking for and they can’t go there—to go into business cycles, etc., would be even more ideological and therefore (2) too subjective. |
| Rhetorical Devices/Logic fallacies | PF should not be "framing [Brown's statement] as favorably as possible" but trying to determine (or interpret) why jobs were not created with the Bush tax cuts (compared to Clinton). |
| DOES IT CHANGE THE RULING? | From the aspect of the those "arbitrary" points in time of the presidential terms, it's still TRUE. But I'm guessing under "Consequences" below he'd prefer a "Barely True." |
| My view | Bryan is asking for more than PF can deliver than just “checking out quantitative claims.” |
| Comments | The prior statement by Brown (question was “…add tax [cuts] to the deficit?”), ignored by both PF and Bryan, was that this was more about the role of the huge increase in deficits (borrowing) which financed Bush’s tax cuts, as well as Bush’s Kaldor-Hicks economic policies. (Also: Financing tax cuts is technically Keynesian stimulus.) |
Consequences of Bryan’s interpretation (What I have to believe if he is correct) | Brown’s claim of 22 million jobs created during Clinton years is barely true and not the point. Brown and PF are falsely setting arbitrary start-and-end points (the presidential terms). Clinton did have policies more geared to free markets, but the jobs created from 1993-2000 were more the result of the recovering economy he inherited and the Republican congress. GWBush is unfairly treated because he inherited an economy in recession and 9/11 occurred. Brown’s real point was that tax cuts do not create jobs, and PF failed to address that. |
Bryan's Rating | Five Peppies because it wasn't any of these things--the politicians are taking too much credit for the high tech internet boom and bust...plus he ignored the "borrowing" |
PF Rating | Three Peppies because this is a pretty standard Democratic talking point and doesn't have to be re-visited |
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