Bush LIES About 9/11 Impact On Jobs

We all know the republican talking points regarding jobs.  We inherited a recession and we were attacked on 9/11.  The Bush administration thinks it can hide behind these two excuses to account for the jobs lost over the last four years.  

Don't let them get away with it.  Hit them with these stats if a republican ever uses the 9/11 or recession excuse.

Also, with the lower than expected jobs number released today, you will certainly hear these excuses in the debate tonight, so it will be vital that Kerry counters them.

Lets start with these facts:

When all is said and done this morning, counting the September job gains, the August revision of job numbers, and the 200K jobs added from March of 2003 to March of 2004, the number of jobs lost under President Bush is around 585,000

Ok, what is the president's rational for being the first President since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs?

"We had an attack on 9/11 where we lost over a MILLION jobs in just 3 months"
-Suzy DeFrancis, White House Deputy Assistant for Communications, CNN, 9/15/04

"And because of the attacks of September the 11th, nearly a MILLION jobs were lost in three months."
-George Bush, speech in Wisconsin, 10/7/04

This seems to be a new excuse by the president.  Not in blaming 9/11 for the jobs lost in our country, but saying a million jobs were lost in 3 months because of 9/11.  And since only recently has he started saying a million jobs were lost due to 9/11, I expect him to say it in tonight's debate.

The problem with that statistic is that it is a blatant lie.  Here is why:

In a document titled "Impact of the Events of September 11, 2001, on the Mass Layoff Statistics Data Series," the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics says that only 125,637 jobs were reported lost as a direct or indirect result of the attacks.  This is significant because a majority of the layoff events took place in the weeks immediately following the attacks.

In the first 3 months, employers reported 125,637 workers being layed off as a direct or indirect effect of the attacks.

Yup, thats right, even though their own government web site said 125,637 people were layed off because of 9/11, the President and his advisors decided to raise the number of jobs lost to a million.  Ridiculous.

The Department of Labor goes on to note that it really isn't possible to seperate out how many people became unemployed as a result of 9/11 v.s. how many people were unemployed as a result of the ever-worsening economy before 9/11.  So the White House decided to make it an even million.

I also want to point out 36% of the workers fired because of 9/11 were in the air transportation industry, and 26% were in the hotel and motel industry.  Those are the two biggest percentages of workers in industries who lost jobs.  Well, how does Bush explain the job losses in manufacturing?

Now, for the numbers crunching, and these are very rough numbers, I might add.

585,000 net jobs lost under Bush - 125,637 net jobs lost because of 9/11 = 459,363 jobs lost if 9/11 had not occured.

Well, Bush still can use the recession as an excuse, right?  Not exactly.  I don't think anybody knows the impact the recession had on jobs.  But lets put this in perspective:

There have been many presidents since Herbert Hoover that have been hit with recessions.  Franklin Roosevelt was hit with a couple recessions, had a war on his hands, and also was president when the United States was attacked.  No jobs lost.  George Bush Sr. had a recession that lasted practically 4 years.  Yet, no jobs lost.

And the funny thing is that, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research was that this most recent recession was one of the mildest recessions ever recorded.  It lasted only 8 months, ending in November, 2001.  That is slightly less than the average recession since WWII, which was 11 months.  So, how many jobs does he think the recession cost America?

It is also hard for him to make excuses when his post-9/11, post-recession job predictions show a gain of 6 million new jobs.

The bottom line is that Bush has to make up excuses to account for his failed economic policy.  Hold Bush accountable, and don't let him or his aides make these excuses without a response.  Let the media know about Bush's fake excuses, and get the word out.

•  All Bush does is make excuses and everybody

  should be tired of that old line already.  

  Bush probably invented the line: "the dog ate my homework".

  by LionelEHutz on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:05:19 AM PDT

•  They can't use the recession

  The whole point is that Bush didn't do anything to resolve economic problems over the last four years.

  by Jonathan on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:06:30 AM PDT

  •  exactly

    by LionelEHutz on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:10:15 AM PDT

•  9/11 was responsible ...

  in that every major corporation that had already planned to lay off American workers and outsource their jobs to China and India used 9/11 as the excuse. "Oh, those evil terrorists; business has suffered; we have to let you go", said corporate executives whose businesses had scarcely if at all been affected. Admittedly, some areas, like the airlines, did take a terrorist affected hit because people saw activities as risky, but this was only a small proportion of those that claimed economic hardship.

  by Jon Meltzer on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:17:30 AM PDT

•  Good catch!!

  I've already seen this meme spreading from the wingnuts on certain highly combative forums.  You just gave me a tool to fight it.  Thanks!

  by Craziel on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:22:42 AM PDT

•  9/11 whacked a lot of companies hard...

  including mine because it's very affected by tourism.

  But I've always told people that the damage could have been contained if we had a positive president who acted as a cheerleader to pull the economy back up.

  "We're big, we're strong, we were hurt but we'll bounce back."

  What did we get instead?

  "Be afraid!! Be afraid all the time!! Mushroom clouds over 'merica!!"

  Color wheels of terra spinning. Constant fear mongering, then the invasion of Iraq which again threw sand in the gears.

  These guys have lowered expectations. They've introduced such a gloom that I think some people may expect it to be permanent.

  by fly on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:29:30 AM PDT

•  Great.

  I think that this diary is extremely constructive. (I recommended it, BTW.)  You are right that this has emerged as the talking point, and it needs to be swatted down.  I had not heard of the BLS report on this (by the way, is there a link?).  I can see this in the town-hall debate.  "Mr. Bush just said something quite significant.  He told us that one million jobs had been destroyed by the 9/11 attacks.  But the government's own Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a report in which they estimated that only 125,000 jobs were lost as a result of the attacks.  In other words, Mr. Bush is inflating the true figure by a factor of eight.  I think everyone in this room needs to ask himself or herself why he feels the need to do that, to falsify the numbers, even numbers that can be so easily checked, in order to avoid responsibility for his own economic policy failures."  And JohnKerry.com can have a copy of the BLS pdf for downloading.

  by jem6x on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:29:37 AM PDT

  •  Here is a link...

    But it is not from BLS website.  This is where I got my information from though.

    http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=66489

    I also post on a conservative blog, though people who comment on it are from both political parties, and if you bring up how bad jobs and the economy are, republicans are quick to point out the impact 9/11 had on jobs, and I really had no response for it.

    That is, until I found some actual reports done on the impact 9/11 has.  You are exactly right.  This is THE talking point for the Bush campaign when explaining the jobs loss, and it will surely come up in the debate tonight.

    The point is that Bush repeats this line over and over, and I have really seen no true response to it.  But if you hit Bush on the economic impact 9/11 was actually estimated to have, he has no viable excuse left.  And the fact is, while many democrats don't believe him, the 9/11 excuse is very appealing to independent and undecided voters, and if Bush isn't seriously confronted on that excuse, many people will not put the blame of the jobs loss on him.  However, you don't want to come across as insensitive to those 125,637 jobs lost.

    by sportsman885 on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:58:50 AM PDT

    •  This may be a better link.

      Here is a brief comment from the BLS's Monthly Labor Review, 9/10/03.  It actually shows a figure of 145,844 layoffs due to 9/11 in 2001 and 2002.  I don't know whether the earlier figure is for the three-month window used by the Repub spin doctors, or whether the figures have been revised up a bit.  It's kind of interesting that these are results from the direct question in the Mass Layoffs Survey, regarding whether the layoff in question was 9/11 related or not -- there's no fancy economic model being used.

      Maybe the link to the survey within the note can be used to figure out if the 125,000 figure comes from a 3-month cutoff, but I don't have the time to get at that yet.

      by jem6x on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 04:35:24 PM PDT

•  What about new Homeland Security jobs?

  sportsman885, thanks for a great diary.  It goes against all common sense to think that a million jobs were lost because of 9/11.  What happened, all the companies that worked in the twin towers went belly up?  Without doubt, businesses were dramatically affected by the tragedy, but I assume most of them are working today.

  But weren't there new jobs because of 9/11?  Airport inspectors, increased security guards at public buildings, the boomlet in security software companies, and sadly, the increase in construction workers and clean-up crew for New York city?  And even worse, don't forget that a prolonged war produces jobs, with military equipment and supplies having to be constantly replenished.

  As Jim Ryan would say, why should we believe the president when he says this?  Forgive us for not believing this nonsense.  Actually, fuck that.  Don't forgive us.  We don't need your damn forgiveness, we only need you out of office.

  by hazey on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:30:34 AM PDT

•  recession is bad excuse

  I say if they use the recession excuse hit them hard:
  either you knew you were inheriting a recession ala the clinton's fault argument or you created the recession.
  Obviously they will go with the it's clintons fault, we inherited a recession. So from that we attack them on the poor planning of using the surplus to stop the recession.
  At first the tax cuts were justified because we have such a huge surplus that the people deserve their money not the gov't.  But if they knew they were inheriting a recession than that is just irresponsible to give the money back like that.  Second, they poorly planned how to use the surplus to slow down and turn around the recession.

  by upsavr on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:40:26 AM PDT

•  he'd

  already lost about 900K jobs through September 2001. 9/11 did hit some industries hard as you point out, tourism and the airlines especially, but the airlines were already heading for trouble pre 9/11.  Additionally, in all but one of post recession recoveries, going back to the one in  73-75 - double the length of W's, job growth in the next 12 months was positive.  The one where it was negative was his dad's in 90-91.  I guess piss poor performance runs in the family.  

  Like father, like son,; One and Done

  by geneticdem on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:46:15 AM PDT

•  Bush projected major job gains after 9/11

  if we just followed his policies. His failures have nothing to do with 9/11.

  http://www.epinet.org/newsroom/releases/2004/02/040212ceaPR.pdf

  "The administration's forecasts are looking less and less like projections based in economic reality and more and more like exercises in wishful thinking," said Bernstein. "The CEA keeps telling us we're about to turn a corner, but we never seem to make it to the corner. That should send the administration a crystal clear signal that its job growth policies are ineffective."

  The report notes that the CEA's unduly optimistic projections have forced the administration to continually shift the target as actual job creation falls short of the projections. The report notes that the CEA has downgraded its projections for employment in 2004 from the 138.3 million forecast in 2002 to 135.2 million in its 2003 forecast and now to 132.7 million in this latest forecast. Even so, the rate of job growth required to reach even this scaled back target is far beyond any recent performance in the economy.

  by jec on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 08:47:15 AM PDT

•  Great Diary. We'll be ready. (N/T)

  by DaveV on Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 09:35:21 AM PDT