Posted on 08/30/2003 8:39:01 AM PDT by Brian S
Sat August 30, 2003 10:10 AM ET
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush said on Saturday he plans to travel to three states next week to talk about job growth and the economy.
Bush also touted the benefits that families and workers have received from tax cuts earlier this year and said in a Labor Day weekend radio address that worker productivity grew last year at the fastest rate in more than half a century.
The president spoke a day after the Commerce Department released data showing consumer spending, which makes up about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, grew last month.
"As consumer spending rises, manufacturers are seeing more new orders for their goods," Bush said. "Low interest rates mean businesses have better balance sheets, and families have saved billions of dollars by refinancing their homes. These are the signs of a reviving economy."
"Now we must build on this progress and make sure that the economy creates enough new jobs for American workers," he said.
After spending nearly all of August on vacation at his Texas ranch, Bush will travel next week to Ohio, Missouri and Indiana to discuss his job growth agenda, which includes a comprehensive energy plan, reined-in government spending, legal reform and free trade agreements with other countries.
Bush won all three states in the 2000 presidential election.
On Monday, Bush will be in Richfield, Ohio, to speak at an operating engineers training center. After a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday to sign free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore, Bush will visit Kansas City on Thursday to talk about the economy. His week concludes with an economic speech in Indianapolis.
I would strongly suggest the President address partial birth abortion. If that ban isn't in place well before the election, I'll blank it, and I'm not alone.
Tax cuts are nice but, every day babies in their ninth month are slaughtered while the President ignore the stale mate in congress.
Mr. President, the biggest tax cut when to the 3+ million who lost jobs or had to take lesser pay.
Bush needs to do something. Does he not understand the synergy between workers having their highest productivity gains in history and job losses? In the 50's and 60's, we were very productive, but not nearly as much as now, and wages were skyrocketing. They are barely keeping up with inflation some years, and not and all in others in the last 2 decades.
We have a problem with productivity ironically. If we get so productive, but the world economy stays flat, we are going to bleed more jobs, while fewer and fewer do the job that it used to take more to do.
In a robust world economy, it wouldn't matter. We would just produce more product. Now that we are for better or worse tied into globalism, we are even more affected by the malaise around the world. Allowing key industries to go overseas, aided by tax incentives to do so, certainly isn't helping matters.
I don't want a democrat to win. However, everybody is familiar with 6 degrees of seperation. Consider how many people these 3,000,000 unemployed people know. Many of these people will be angry. Their wives, children, parents might still be working, but they are going to be affected by the people without jobs. Their friends, co-workers who survived one round of layoffs will feel insecure, unless the companies begin to hire again.
No, Bush shouldn't institute socialism to get votes. He should however be able to demonstrate that he understands the problem, and understands the solutions. If it's capital gains tax cuts, R&D tax credits, or a myriad of things that should be done to encourage growth, he needs to sell the policy to his shareholders, the american people.
He can very easily be re-elected in 2004 with a sluggish job market, if he at least gives people the confidence that he understands why the market is acting the way it is, and he does what he can, through directed tax cuts, reduced red tape, that can be done.
This economy is a perfect time to introduce tort reform. We all sort of vaguely know how lawyers are bleeding this economy dry. In a bad economy, the president would have rapt attention if he did a Ross Perot style chart presentation on how much of every dollar goes to workman's comp, trial lawyers and the like, and how when somebody wins a $100 million jackpot in court, it affects everybody else's job prospects.
In other words, the president needs to at least appear to be firmly in charge. Perception can change reality.
They didn't necessarily save those dollars --- how many went and bought a bunch of junk with their extra credit? Still --- if Bush is starting to realize that Americans need jobs then this is very good. He just needs to start noticing what happened to all the jobs in the past decade.
With apologies, we don't need an 'actor', we need results.
This part doesn't make it look like he much cares if Americans have jobs. I guess talk is cheap, we'll see if he does anything to get jobs back in the USA or he's just going around signing free trade agreements that take Americans jobs away.
Hanging out with Haliburton.
With gas at $2.00 a gallon--AGAIN. I am staring to belive all those Dick-Cheney-Haliburton stories and I don't even know what the hell they were all about.
Everybody is making money. Even underperformers like Unocal made $750 million the last quarter. In true capitalism, there are winners and losers. If being a loser means only generating $750 million in profit, it must be a sweet industry to be a loser in.
"As consumer spending rises, manufacturers in China are seeing more new orders for their goods,"
Except for the over 3 million families that may have lost their homes because their employers moved to China, families have saved billions of dollars by refinancing their homes
On Monday, Bush will be in Richfield, Ohio, to speak at an operating engineers training center bragging about how busy the opertors will be in the coming years...
Of course he won't dare talk to the Millwrights, Boilermakers, Iron Workers, Carpenters, Pipe Fitters or any other skilled tradesmen, or loggers and lumber companies, hardware producers, roofing manufacturers, insulation companies, etc, because they will not be needed...The massive amount of work for the Operating Engineers will be tearing down exhisting empty factories, NOT building new ones...
Why don't you go to Unocal's website and see what they have been doing? Their stock price is pretty much been going sideways for the past five years; most new exploration is been done in growth friendly countries (ie. NOT the United States); and they have been undergoing massive restructuring and cost savings in order to be even able to turn a profit.
If you think that Unocal and other oil suppliers are making out like bandits, then put your money where your mouth is and buy their stock. According to you, the stock dividends would be like robbing a new bank every day. Get in on the action and scoop up stock and become filthy rich and then we will see how altruistic you are about handing money over to ne're do wells.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.