Poverty rate declines under Republican Administration
August 28, 2007 · Print This Article
For the first time that I can recall the AP is reporting (via FoxNews) that the poverty rate has declined during a Republican Administration. This in itself is news but AP couldn’t stop there, they had to make the obligatory statement that people living without health insurance also increased to 47 million. This is absolute bull but it has been the MSM line for too many years now, it assumes that there are 47 million people out there who would sign up for health insurance if it were free, or provided by the government on the backs of all the taxpayers.
There is also this little tid bit in the story: “In 2005, the poverty rate dipped from 12.7 percent to 12.6 percent, but Census officials said that change was statistically insignificant.” Of course it wasn’t significant; a republican was in the White House. When will the liberals over at the AP realize that people don’t believe the garbage they print and we largely only use it for its comedic value.
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http://www.lapop.lsu.edu/poverty%20and%20income.pdf
Poverty Rate 1988—13.0%
Poverty Rate 1992—14.8%, a 13.8% increase between 1988 and 1992 (aka the Bush 1 years)
Poverty Rate 2000—11.3%, a 23.6% reduction between 1992 to 2000 (aka the Clinton years)
Poverty Rate 2006—12.3%, an 8.8% increase between 2000 and 2006 (aka the Bush 2 years)
Conservatives not so superior according to the data..
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Oh..and one other thing..regarding your inference about the following:
“In 2005, the poverty rate dipped from 12.7 percent to 12.6 percent, but Census officials said that change was statistically insignificant.”
Do you understand that it wasn’t the “liberals” at AP who came up with the phrase “statistically insignificant” to describe the drop in the poverty rate from 12.6% to 12.5% reported in 2005..?
That phrase “statistically insignificant” was taken directly from the Census Bureau’s own press release that was put out with the Bureau’s annual Income and Poverty Report for 2005..
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Well it certainly depends on how you look at the data.
In terms of actual people (not percentages):
Reagan years (2 terms): People in poverty increased 15725
Bush 41 years (1 term): People in poverty increased 13019
Clinton years (2 terms): People in poverty increased 22395
I am not certain where you get your numbers for the Clinton years but there was most certainly not a reduction in people living in poverty. I will grant you that the Bush 41 numbers were high. But Bush 41 was by no means conservative compared to Reagan.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/rdp06.html
It’s like budgets, liberals like you tell us that we are increasing defense spending, when it increases 2% year over year, then you tell us that we’re cutting school lunches when that program will only grow at 9% vs. the 15% you wanted. We don’t do fuzzy math here Rich.
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I never said that there was a reduction of “people living in poverty” during Clinton’s term..or anybody else’s term in office. Your original post discused the “poverty rate” … not “people living in poverty”.
Now you want to change the topic and the measure when it suits you..to “people living in poverty” rather than the “poverty rate”.
Maybe you should be a little less “fuzzy” about what you mean in the future when you are trying to compare statistics across administrations..
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Here is another one for you Brandon..since you seem to believe the economy is doing so well these days..AND that comparing aggregate numbers is a valid way to look at how things in the economy have improved or gotten worse:
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln
Unemployment level
Dec-88…….6,518,000
Dec-92…….9,557,000
Dec-00…….5,634,000
Jul-07…….7,121,000
The unemployment level increased by 3,039,000 people under Bush 1.
The unemployment level decreased by 3,923,000 people under Clinton.
The unemployment level has increased by 1,487,000 people under Bush 2.
Regardless of whether you call Bush 1 a conservative or not..how can you say that conservatives are superior when under the last two Republicans (the party that conservatives rally around)…the unemployment level has increased..while under the intervening Democratic administration..unemployment levels dropped significantly.
And if you want to take it one step further..why is that..since records have been kept..since 1939..why is it that the number of manufacturing jobs in the USA drops during a Republican administration..always..while the number of manufacturing jobs in the USA increases under a Democratic administration.?
Its hard to argue with 68 years of data that show Republican policies to be inferior at creating jobs..among other things that they suck at achieving as well..
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Ok Rich, I’ve been busy tonight with other things and haven’t been able to give your latest reply the attention it deserves but here are a few things I have put together.
Increase in the number of people employed
From the Dept of Labor
Reagan’s first term: 6,111,000
Reagan’s second term: 10,153,000
Bush 41’s first term: 2,299,000
Clinton’s first term: 9,023,000
Clinton’s second term: 9,480,000
Bush 43’s first term: 2,624,000
Bush 43’s second term: 5,790,000
Now I will grant you the numbers during the Clinton years look impressive. Now I won’t waste space going into why because conservatives already know why and I know that I won’t change your mind. Now I didn’t dig into the manufacturing jobs data but the absence of those jobs, or lack thereof, in the unemployment numbers tells me that yes, manufacturing jobs may be going elsewhere but they are being replaced with high tech jobs, or higher wage jobs.
I also went a step further and looked at the number of government jobs:
Increase in the number of government jobs
From the Dept of Labor
Reagan’s first term: 467,000
Reagan’s second term: 898,000
Bush 41’s first term: 286,000
Clinton’s first term: 697,000
Clinton’s second term: 1,336,000
Bush 43’s first term: -1,594,000
Bush 43’s second term: 138,000
Now even I will admit I was surprised by this data. I expected the increase in government jobs during the Clinton years. After all very few grew government like Clinton, but conservatives, myself included, have been critical of Bush 43 for growing government and while he has with programs I was shocked that over Bush’s first term government jobs actually decreased by almost 1.6 million.
Now that’s something to be proud of!
I think you better go back and check your fuzzy math again Brandon..because you are totally wrong about the growth in government jobs…as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics..
There is NO way Bush 2 presided over a decline in the the number of government jobs. In fact..with the growth of government jobs during the current Bush’s first term from 2001 through 2004..the number of nonfarm jobs would have declined between 2001 and 2004..
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce
Dec-80…….16,373,000
Dec-84…….16,282,000……(-91,000)
Dec-88…….17,736,000……(+1,454,000)
Dec-92…….18,878,000……(+1,142,000)
Dec-96…….19,571,000……(+693,000)
Dec-00…….20,804,000……(+1,233,000)
Dec-04…….21,704,000……(+900,000)
Jul-07…….22,227,000……(+523,000)
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And Brandon..a debate does not mean that you get to simply dismiss a rebutted point by saying that “we conservatives know the REAL truth about Clinton’s economy”..
That don’t fly…unless you can show that there really are higher wage jobs being created to replace the millions of manufacturing jobs disappearing under Republican administrations…especially when the median household income is lower today than when Bush 2 took office.
That great sucking sound you hear are the Reagan Democrats leaving the the Republican party in droves after their jobs have been outsourced to China or India..
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Forgive me I sited the wrong source on the government workers.
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=228
And this data360 obtains the data from the census bureau.
As for your statement today about the median household income being lower today than when Bush 43 took office, sorry but that doesn’t translate either.
2005 $46,326
2004 44,334
2003 43,318
2002 42,409
2001 42,228
2000 41,990
1999 40,696
1998 38,885
1997 37,005
1996 35,492
1995 34,076
1994 32,264
1993 31,241
That comes to us via http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h05.html
Now as for that great sucking sound of Reagan Democrats leaving the Republican party in droves I ask you, Where are they going to go?
Back to a Democrat party that does nothing but make victims out of people. Enlist class envy, and preach socialism as the cure for the worlds ills. Back to a Democrat Party out to undermine the military secure defeat in spite of overwhelming success?
Tell me Rich, where do you plan to go?
Brandon you are a fool. What I can never understand is why people who are Republicans because they think conservatives create better economic conditions refuse to acknowledge that is not true and instead go through all these contortions to try and prove it is. If you want a good economy vote Democrat, history has proven it over and over. The stock market which is a pretty good barometer nearly always does better under Democratic administrations. Why do you guys insist on trying to make the data show what you want when the bare straightforward numbers speak for themselves. What are you trying to protect? Isn’t the economic performance the point, not sticking up for the Republican’s failed policies and dogma?
Terry,
Not certain where you learned your history but reality is that voting democrat for a good economy makes about as much sense as Israel electing Hitler it’s prime minister.
Democrats still don’t understand economics. They still believe tax cuts have to be paid for. It’s the people’s money. The last three democrats elected president have left us a weaker nation and in recession.
You better learn your history.
Brandon, you cited the median income data using current year dollars, not adjusted for inflation. If you look at the column of data next to the one you showed in your post, you see that median incomes measured against a consistent dollar value (2007 dollars, in this case) have indeed dropped during the Bush II administration:
2007 $50,233
2006 49,568
2005 49,202
2004 48,665
2003 48,835
2002 48,878
2001 49,455
2000 50,557
1999 50,641
1998 49,397
1997 47,665
1996 46,704
1995 46,034
1994 44,636
1993 44,143
1992 44,359
I’ll be interested in seeing the median income data for the final year of the Bush II administration - it’s possible that it could rise back to or even above the 2000 value. However, as it stands, median income increased $6,148 during the Clinton administration and decreased $324 under Bush II (measured in 2007 dollars).
As far as the economic strengths of Democratic versus Republican presidents, I recommend you check out
http://www.eriposte.com/economy/other/demovsrep.htm
The statistics show that Democratic administrations have done better than Republican ones according to a wide variety of economic statistics.
Oh, and the last three Democratic administrations did not leave the economy in a recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (http://www.nber.org/cycles.html), we were not in recession in January of 1969, 1977, or 2001.
Once again, the facts show their well known liberal bias.
A correction to my previous post - the changeover from the Carter administration to the Reagan administration was in January of 1981, not January of 1977. D’oh.
There wasn’t a recession in effect then either.