February 19, 2004
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC)
By Marilyn GeewaxWASHINGTON - The Bush administration backed down Wednesday from its own forecast that U.S. employers would add 2.6 million jobs this year, a shift that gave Democrats new ammunition in the battle over the economy.
Last week, the President's Council of Economic Advisers said in its annual economic report that 2.6 million jobs would be created this year. That figure, which most economists said was exceedingly optimistic, would more, than replace all the jobs lost, since Bush became president three years ago.
On Tuesday Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Don Evans refused to endorse the official estimate, as they toured Oregon and Washington to promote the White House's economic agenda. Snow noted that all estimates have a margin of error and added: "I think we are going to create a lot of jobs. How many, I don't know, but we're going to keep working on it."
When questioned by reporters about Snow's comments Wednesday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the forecast was only "economic modeling" that had been done by "number crunchers." "Some have said it would be lower," McClellan said. McClellan then quoted Bush, who has a master's degree in business administration from Harvard University, as saying: "I'm not a statistician. I'm not a predictor."
Later reporters asked Bush himself about the jobs prediction during a brief question-and-answer session in the Oval Office. He did not specifically address the 2.6 million figure, but said he is "pleased by the fact that since August there's been 366,000 new jobs in one survey."
Most economists say it would be extremely difficult to reach a net gain of 2.6 million jobs this year. In January new jobs totaled just 112,000. Polls of voters have shown that jobs are seen as the top issue facing the country this election year and Democrats raced Wednesday to capitalize on the administration's shift on job growth.
"They're already walking backward on their own promises to America on the number of jobs they're going to create," Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said at a rally in Dayton, Ohio. Kerry, the leading Democratic candidate for President, has suggested various steps for curbing job losses, such as stepping up the enforcement of labor and environmental rules in trade agreements and revising the tax code to eliminate incentives to move jobs to lower-wage countries.
Six Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, sent a letter to Bush on Wednesday urging him to revise the annual economic report and order his economic team to explain to Congress, how it came up with their forecast. "While we hope that your projections are accurate, we are concerned that your economic report presents an unrealistic picture of the economy, as the 2004 election year gets under way," said the letter. Among the signers were Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Wednesday marked the second time administration officials had distanced themselves from the economic advisers' report. The first time involved the report's assertion that the movement of U.S. jobs to foreign shores benefits the U.S. economy. When Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, submitted the report to Congress last week, he called outsourcing U.S. jobs abroad "just a new way of doing international trade" and "probably a plus for the economy in the long run." While Mankiw hastened to say he was not praising U.S. job losses, Bush added language to a speech last week in Pennsylvania acknowledging "there are people looking for work, because jobs have gone overseas." He said he knows "we need to act."