EDITORIAL
Jobs: the potential Waterloo for Bush

Two numbers doubtless made President Bush's re-election campaign shudder last week: 6.4 and 30,000.

Bush is painfully aware that his father lost his re-election bid, despite a highly successful war against Iraq, because the domestic economy was struggling. Determined to avoid the same fate, Bush has sought to stimulate the economy with an unprecedented series of tax cuts, officially called a "jobs and growth" plan.

"Listen, I'm interested in one thing," the president said during a rally last month to promote the latest tax cut. "I'm interested in helping people find work."

Nevertheless, the nation's unemployment rate climbed to its highest level — 6.4 percent — in more than nine years last month. Employers cut 30,000 jobs in June, while May's job losses, which had initially been reported at 17,000, were sharply revised to 70,000.

With more than 2 million jobs vaporized since Bush took office in January 2001, he finds himself in danger of becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a decline in the country's employment.

Is that Bush's fault? Economists disagree. Have Bush's tax cuts stemmed the tide of job losses? Clearly not yet, at least.

For the rest of his term, if jobs are added to the economy no faster than the average rate of growth over the past 50 years, Bush's jobs record will inch out of the red into positive territory.

But the depth and breadth of this slowdown suggest to many economists that the jobs deficit won't be erased by the end of 2004.

That's not a problem for the rich taxpayers who are banking huge tax cuts. But it's a big problem for the unemployed, for whom tax cuts, small or large, are meaningless. And those folks vote.