The Cheap-Shot Kid

Consumer confidence, as judged by the Conference Board, is now at a two-year high, boosted by an improving jobs market. The percentage of Americans who consider jobs hard to find is the lowest since October 2002.

However, according to the speakers at the Democratic National Convention -- including former Presidents Clinton and Carter, and former Veep Al Gore -- the jobs picture is terrible and confidence is low. Things, they say, couldn't be worse.

In Boston, Clinton argued against so-called tax cuts for the rich that leave "ordinary citizens to fend for themselves." He added that "the only test that matters is whether people were better off when we finished than when we started."

But when Clinton first sat in the Oval Office in 1993, he inherited a strong economic recovery from Papa Bush, with real economic growth registering a 4.1 percent gain. When George W. Bush inherited the economy from Clinton, the U.S. was dropping into recession.

Real gross domestic product declined in the third quarter of 2000 and a stock market downturn followed. Output continued to drop during the first three quarters of 2001, well before any Bush economic policies could have an impact.

No one denies the long prosperity cycle of the 1990s, especially from the end of 1994 through the close of 1999. A partnership between a Republican Congress and a Democratic president produced tight budget controls, work-enhancing welfare reform, lower tax rates on stocks and homes, and free-trade agreements to reduce import taxes on consumers and increase export sales by U.S. businesses.

Actually, the '90s boom followed on the heels of the prosperity of the 1980s -- launched by former President Ronald Reagan. The popular Californian slashed income-tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent and corporate rates from 45 percent to 34 percent. He also triggered massive deregulation which transformed and modernized the U.S. economy, opening it up to the information technology revolution that carried productivity and growth to ever higher levels over a two-decade period.

There was a brief recession in 1990-'91 and a relatively mild one in 2000-'01. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, in 22 years since 1982, the U.S. economy has experienced only six recessionary quarters.

This is a remarkable achievement. It was gained primarily through free-market economic policies that substantially reduced the government's footprint and significantly increased private enterprise, consumer choice, and business competition.