The Middle Class Economy Under George Bush

   Stats, stats, and more stats. I just love statistics, especially when they happen to make the spin machine from Bush and company look worse than idiots.

   Family Health Insurance has gone up 80.8 percent since the year 2000. the average premium for family health insurance comes in at $11,480 per year. It was at $6,348 in 2000.

The number of uninsured Americans is also up to 46.6 million in 2005 compared to 39.8 million in 2000.   Source

  The Wall Street Journal, “Since the end of the recession of 2001, a lot of the growth in GDP per person – that is, productivity – has gone to profits, not wages.   

The real median earnings of both male and female full-time, full-year workers declined between 2004 and 2005 by 1.8 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively.[15]  Median weekly earnings have risen only 0.9 percent between 2000 and 2006 compared with 7.1 percent growth between 1996 and 2000 under the Clinton Administration.[16]

   Job creation? Not hardly.

   Non-farm payroll employment up by only 5.2 million since Bush was elected while it rose 22.7 million under President Clinton. Employment growth has averaged only 70,000 per month under Bush which is much lower than the roughly 150,000 per month job growth needed to keep up with the population growth.  Previous administrations have been known to have had gains of 300,000 to 400,000 per month job growth.

Private sector job creation has been especially poor during the Bush presidency, with an average annual job growth rate of only 0.5 percent per year since 2001. Just 3.8  million private sector jobs have been created during the Bush presidency, compared with over 20 million private sector jobs during the Clinton presidency.   Source

    Check out this fact on our United States poverty levels.

More American families and children face severe financial problems.  The average annual increase in the poverty rate during President Bush’s first term is second only to that during George H.W. Bush’s administration and contrasts sharply with the declines in the Clinton and Kennedy-Johnson Administrations.[35]  The poverty rate has increased 12 percent to 12.6 percent since 2000.[36]  Nearly thirty-seven million Americans were living in poverty in 2005,[37] an increase of 5.4 million over the 2000 level, the year before President Bush took office.[38]  Poverty has hit America’s children particularly hard.  According to the latest Census report, almost one out of every six American children lives in poverty.[39]  The number of children living in poverty has increased 6.5 percent during the Bush Administration.[40]  

   Democratic Policy Committee for more stats and info.

   Though I generally try to stay away from statistics provided by any political party, I went to their sources, and they are valid.

 

Tags: George Bush middle class poverty jobs income Bill Clinton   employment

VA Bonuses Paid Out In North Carolina

  I'm covering basically two stories here that just happen to merge into one story.

   First off, we all know about the ridiculous bonuses that some members of the VA have been paid even though this group has a budget short-fall, and our troops and veterans wait months to see a doctor.

     All of this has naturally caught the eyes of our oversight committees who know want an explanation.

The Gavel

Congressional leaders on Thursday demanded that the Veterans Affairs secretary explain hefty bonuses for senior department officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1 billion short and jeopardized veterans’ health care.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on oversight, said he would hold hearings to investigate after The Associated Press reported that budget officials at the Veterans Affairs Department received bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, who heads the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said the payments pointed to an improper “entitlement for the most centrally placed or well-connected staff.” He has sent a letter to VA chief Jim Nicholson asking what the department plans to do to eliminate any bonuses based on favoritism.

“These reports point to an apparent gross injustice at the VA that we have a responsibility to investigate,” said Mitchell, D-Ariz. “No government official should ever be rewarded for misleading taxpayers, and the VA should not be handing out the most lucrative bonuses in government as veterans are waiting months and months to see a doctor.”

A list obtained by the AP of bonuses to senior career officials in 2006 documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

     Next, we go to North Carolina and look at some of those bonuses that were paid out.

    According to the News&Observer, the Department of Veterans Affairs paid out more than $335,000 in bonuses to some of the top NC VA hospital managers while they were getting reports of bad patient care and of suspicious deaths.

Regional director Daniel Hoffmann received the largest bonuses, including more than $29,000 in 2004 - the year investigators looked into deaths at the hospitals.

In 2005, bonuses for regional managers and Salisbury hospital executives tallied nearly $80,000, which was the largest total paid in the years reviewed by The Charlotte Observer. That same year, VA investigators concluded the Salisbury and Asheville hospitals provided poor care.

In 2004, Steinberg received a $5,000 bonus less than two weeks before he led an executive meeting on an "unanticipated post operative death." Steinberg received a $12,500 bonus in 2005, though he didn't receive a bonus in 2006.

In January, Steinberg and associate director James Robinson each received $5,000.

   Getting paid a bonus while running  a shoddy service. Sorry folks, but this sounds more Republican than anything else. Since this is a government run ( not very well ) institution in the first place, why are these people getting a bonus? Is this government or a corporation because it is getting hard to tell the difference anymore.

Tags: North Carolina Veterans Administration bonuses