Print

Mail

wiki links

Daschle criticizes Bush's performance

"You have to go all the way back to Herbert Hoover to see a performance in the S&P 500 that we are seeing now."

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle blamed President George W. Bush for the worst economic performance of any administration since the 1930s Depression.

"We have lost 2 million jobs in the last 18 months in the economy," the South Dakota Democrat said in a Senate speech.

"You have to go all the way back to Herbert Hoover to see a performance in the S&P 500 that we are seeing now," Daschle said.

The Standard and Poor's 500 Stock Index declined 30 percent under President Hoover's administration in 1929-1933 and has dropped 21 percent in Bush's 18 months in office, Daschle said.

Daschle's speech is part of a wider effort by Democratic Party officials and candidates to make the economy and corporate responsibility key topics in the November elections, rather than Bush's Iraq policy. Control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate will be determined by the outcome of the election.

Republican leader Senator Trent Lott said the Democratic leader was criticizing Bush unfairly and at the same time failing to fulfill his obligation to pass a federal budget.

"Let me point out that the emperor has no clothes," Lott said. "You can't be accusing somebody else of not doing their job when you haven't done your job."

Daschle praised Bush for protecting national security, then accused the administration of ignoring economic security.

"It takes leadership not only with regard to international and foreign policy but leadership on economic policy as well," Daschle said. "We haven't seen it yet to date here at home."

Lott said Daschle was "trying to change the subject" from Bush's leadership on Iraq before the elections. "That's not going to work," Lott said. "It's too late and it's too negative."

"I would put it under the category of the normal political process," said Paul McCulley, who oversees about US$90 billion for Pacific Investment Management Co. "A president gets credit or gets blame for what happens in his tenure regardless of whether he had anything to do with it."

White House budget director Mitch Daniels, reiterating the administration's forecast of 2 percent to 3 percent economic growth this year, called Daschle's speech "dispiriting and disappointing," and a "tantrum."

"The recession was underway before George Bush took the oath of office," Daniels said.

Bush's attempt to dislodge Saddam Hussein as Iraq's leader has distracted the media, not voters, Democrats said.

"The absolute truth is that the war as an issue is not showing up in Senate races," said Jim Jordan, political director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the fundraising and political arm of Senate Democrats. "Voters are much more concerned with domestic issues."

"There's no question they are desperate to turn the conversation around" and stress Democratic themes on the economy, health care and retirement security, said Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

"It's smart politics," said Chuck Gabriel, senior Washington analyst for Prudential Securities Inc. "It's a repositioning. They were all over the map on Iraq and when they saw the life raft coming, they grabbed it."

Using a series of charts and graphs prepared by the Senate Budget Committee, Daschle pinned economic trends on the Bush administration's fiscal policy, particularly the US$1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut Congress passed last year at Bush's insistence.

"We have suffered the worst economic growth in last 50 years," Daschle said. "I defy anyone to come and present a record more abysmal than we have seen so far."
This story has been viewed 1442 times.