UnionVoice.org asks Are you better off now than you were four years go?
In his four years, George W. Bush has taken away overtime pay, presided over the first net loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, proposed a 30 percent cut in funds for children’s hospitals, sought tax breaks for companies that export jobs overseas and signed a Medicare prescription drug bill that helps HMOs and drug companies more than seniors. He supports privatizing Social Security and has shortchanged the No Child Left Behind Act for education.
Knowing that all politics are local, they provide the following statistics about what George W. Bush has done for New Hampshire:
- New Hampshire has lost 25,900 manufacturing jobs and 2,800 information jobs since January 2001.
- New Hampshire has had a net loss of 7,300 jobs since January 2001.
- 26,736 New Hampshire residents are unemployed — 34.6 percent more than in January 2001.
- 28,000 more New Hampshire residents were uninsured in 2003 than three years earlier.
- 17,000 more New Hampshire residents are poor than in 2000.
- Personal bankruptcies in New Hampshire rose 28.2 percent between 2000 and 2003.
Like the rest of America, New Hampshire has a jobs crisis and a health care crisis. We need a president who will tackle them.