Everything Congress and the President does seems to have one goal: don’t let the economy slow down...for any reason. Keep bringing people in. Keep expanding.
This creates the illusion of a good economy, but allows more income to temporarily deal with the increasing costs of government programs.
All the time this slides back the day of financial reckoning; while increasing the liabilities. Hey, if you have to go bankrupt you might as well do it for billions of dollars instead of a few pennies.
Am I making sense here? It’s the only reason I can think of.
Bush has been dealing with a troubled economy since he took office. He inherited a recession. He inherited a mess caused by lax accounting rules and enforcement under the Clinton administration which eventually blew up with Enron and Worldcom. Clinton made a mess out of the economy during the dot com boom. He inherited a growing economy from his predecessors and not screwing up the economy sooner was the only thing he really accomplished during his presidency, but the growth wasn't healthy growth, and it led to the dot com bust, lots of accounting scandals, and even contributed to the housing boom and bust.
Bush's policies have in many ways helped, in some ways continued problematic policies of the Clinton administration, and in some ways made things worse (Medicare prescription plan).
Bush's economic policies have been far better than Clinton's, but Bush is to a large extent a big government liberal.
It really is amazing that we have kept the economy growing despite the dot com bust, accounting scandals, 9/11, the war on terror, and the housing bubble.
However, one of the ways the economy has been kept going has been by keeping inflation low. Two things that have contributed significantly to that have been trade with China (and other countries with low labor costs) and importing cheap labor from Mexico.
There are good and bad things about both of those. I don't argue for completely ending either, but the poor regulation of both is starting to cost us more than we gain from them.
We need limited, legal immigration.
We need to put more restrictions on what we trade with China by way of technology. We can't stop China from modernizing their economy, and as they do so, they are going to be increasingly an economic force to deal with. Stopping trade with them is also not in our best interests, because it isn't going to help us more than it hurts us. However, we do need to do our best to make them compete fairly and keep them from stealing intellectual property.
We also have to keep in mind that they are very likely going to be a real military threat in the future. We also have to recognize that while they don't appear to have stolen much military technology during the Bush administration, they stole a lot during the Clinton administration. They are trading partners, but they aren't our friends.