Jobs - Obama Vs. Bush

The Republicans have been telling us for quite a while that the key to a booming economy is the creation of jobs in the private sector, and the elimination of jobs in the public sector. If they really believed that, then they should think Barack Obama is a much better president that George Bush.

As the charts above show (from the website Calculated Risk), President Obama has overseen the creation of far more private sector jobs than Bush did (during his entire 8-year term). In addition, public sector jobs have decreased during the term of President Obama, while they climbed significantly during the Bush administration. Here are the numbers:

PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS
Bush administration...............-665,000
Obama administration...............+2,282,000

PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS
Bush administration...............+1,748,000
Obama administration...............-718,000

Using the congressional Republican logic (and I use that term very loosely), President Obama must be far superior to President Bush. But that's not all. They have also told us that the way to create private sector jobs is to lower taxes on corporations and rich people. President Bush did that more than once, while President Obama has raised the taxes on the rich (while leaving taxes on working and middle class Americans the same).

How then can it be that the Bush administration actually lost jobs after lowering taxes -- and the Obama administration continues to have job growth even after raising taxes on the rich? Obviously, the level of taxation has nothing to do with job creation. And President Obama could have created more jobs if the Republicans hadn't killed his bill to repair and rebuild this country's infrastructure.

Which makes me wonder -- are the Republicans really that dumb, or have they just been lying to us all this time? Either way, it is time to vote them out of office so we can get this economy moving again by returning to a sane economic policy.