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Bush Economic Team Under Fire Over Jobs
By TOM RAUM
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 19, 2004; 7:35 AM
WASHINGTON - President Bush touts his economic stewardship as a top re-election asset, yet offhand remarks and mixed signals by leading members of his economic team are proving politically embarrassing and handing fresh ammunition to Democrats.
The White House found itself in the awkward position Wednesday of backing away from its earlier prediction that the economy would add 2.6 million new jobs this year.
White House officials already were reeling from the assertion of N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, that "outsourcing" American jobs overseas was good for the U.S. economy in the long run. Mankiw later apologized and said he had been misunderstood.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan blamed the optimistic jobs projection on bureaucratic "number crunchers."
McClellan's explanation came after Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans declined to endorse the projection while on a bus trip in the Pacific Northwest to plug the president's economic program.
"My crystal ball is not any clearer than anybody else's," Evans said Wednesday when asked about the projection.
Marc Racicot, national chairman of the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, said Thursday he thinks the story has been "elevated beyond what it is."
"It's been mischaracterized," he said on NBC's "Today" show. "This is an economic model. ... Take a look: 112,000 new jobs produced in January."
Racicot called the economic report's references to job-creation "a theoretical discussion by economists. What the report actually produces is every degree of evidence to suggest that this economy is poised for recovery."
The flap comes as Bush is fending off attacks from Democrats over the 2.2 million payroll jobs lost on his watch, the worst job-creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover.
"I think there's a combination of a little bit of tone deafness on the part of some of the economic appointees, coupled with a little economic deafness on the part of others in the administration," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard and Poor's in New York.
"Even if it's better for the country in the long run, you've got to do something for the people who get run over by the truck on the way," Wyss said.
Bush fired his first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, in December 2002 after O'Neill questioned the need for a fresh round of tax cuts.
Lawrence Lindsey was forced out at the same time as director of the president's National Economic Council after suggesting that a war with Iraq could cost $100 billion to $200 billion - which turned out to be close to the mark.
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