Bush also earns low marks for economic policy

The Baltimore Sun

If you think President Bush's abysmal public approval is strictly a function of his mismanagement of the Iraq war, think again: While Mr. Bush's overall approval, depending on the poll, hovers near 30 percent, his approval for handling the economy is not much better.

A June national poll by the American Research Group, in fact, pegged Mr. Bush's overall approval at 27 percent and his handling of the economy just 2 points higher, at 29 percent. Given that the war has eaten most of the president's national agenda, is it any surprise that he gets low marks for policies that have nothing to do with Iraq? Beyond war-making, he's done almost nothing.

And, of course, by committing the United States to spend on that war an amount that will undoubtedly reach a cool trillion dollars in the near term - and hundreds of billions more for veterans' health benefits and to replace military equipment in the coming decades - Mr. Bush's invasion and occupation of what we might as well start calling the 51st American state are not without economic consequences. War, after all, is also an economic policy.

So how is the American economy doing?

The Bush administration proudly boasts that the median household income grew in 2005 - by 1.1 percent, to be exact - something that hasn't happened since 1999. But this figure includes senior citizens, most of whom derive a significant portion of their income from Social Security payments. Once the 2.8 percent income growth of elderly Americans is removed, the change in median income for working-age households is negative - as it has been in every year of the Bush era.

As Economic Policy Institute analysts Jared Bernstein and Elise Gould reported last year, for the five-year period from 2000 to 2005, inflation-adjusted household incomes dropped 2.7 percent for all households but declined 5.4 percent for non-elderly households.

When households feel the squeeze, bill collectors don't just disappear. So it should be no surprise that debt in America continues its steady rise.

In 1975, household debt was 44 percent of the gross domestic product and 61 percent of disposable income; as of last year, it was 96 percent of GDP and 134 percent of disposable income. According to the Federal Reserve Board's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances - for which the Fed is again collecting data this year - between 2001 and 2004, the debt of a typical American family increased by a third.

If the American flag represented national solvency, the red would bleed out much of the white and blue. We are a debtor nation, borrowing from the Chinese to pay our bills.

Last Friday, at a panel in Washington sponsored by the Brookings Institution, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake presented findings from surveys on the state of the American dream that her firm conducted for Change To Win, a national progressive organization.

The responses from nonsupervisory, blue- and white-collar employees making less than $100,000 per year reveal great anxiety among America's working classes.

"Workers are anxious about the state of the economy," the report concluded. "They believe strongly that, despite the news accounts of economic growth, working families are falling behind."

Nor are workers hopeful about the future: Only 15 percent think the next generation will be better off. "Both college-educated and non-college-educated parents now think their children will not be better off than they are," said Ms. Lake, noting that pessimism used to be largely the domain of adults without college degrees.

Despite decades of conservative emphasis on economic opportunity, Americans who work for a living aren't buying the "ownership society" and other presidential platitudes. Working people value "economic security" over "economic opportunity," 69 percent to 26 percent - and by security they mean health care reform and retirement security.

"Only 1 percent of Americans said the American dream means obtaining wealth," noted Ms. Lake, in direct rebuke to the familiar but false claims from conservatives that people think getting rich is the core of our national identity.

The American dream used to be simply stated: Work hard and you get ahead. But Americans are working harder than ever: Productivity is up, vacation time down. The fruits of their labor, though hardly spoiled, just don't taste as sweet.

Thomas F. Schaller teaches political science at UMBC. His column appears Wednesdays in The Sun. His e-mail is schaller67@hotmail.com.

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