By Dick Miller
WE CONNECT DOTS: Over the last 60 years, each time a Democrat occupied the White House more manufacturing jobs have been created than lost. Conversely, when a Republican was president, we lost more manufacturing jobs than created.
Records compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, support these summations.
This very telling stat is not part of the carefully scripted effort to get Barack Obama re-elected. Who knows why?
The numbers would not have been discovered if Bill Clinton hadn’t made his speech at the Democrat convention.
“. . . since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What’s the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million!” Clinton said.
That statistic received nary a mention by mainstream media afterward.
Some fact checkers gave their approval to Clinton’s numbers – Bloomberg Verdict, Tampa Bay Times Politifact and, reluctantly, the Washington Post. Two economic researchers decided to dig deeper.
Colin Gordon, history professor at University of Iowa, and Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of Keystone Research Center, a think tank affiliated with the PA AFL-CIO, Harrisburg, said Clinton’s jobs report raised a more important question.
What about manufacturing jobs?
Manufacturing is more important than any other form of employment. According to the national Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, manufacturing accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. exports and three quarters of export growth over the past year. “Despite its long decline, most of which occurred under Republican presidents, manufacturing still accounts for 12 million jobs. Manufacturing sustains a wide array of service, sales and supply chain employment,” Gordon and Herzenberg wrote.
A trend is apparent that manufacturing may dwindle to near nothing in the US should we continue electing conservative Republicans interspersed with weak Democrats to the office of President. The dwindling impact of organized labor in the private sector accelerates the demise.
Since WWII when Republicans occupied the White House (36 years), there occurred a net loss of manufacturing jobs in the US. The terms of Eisenhower, Nixon/Ford, Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2 showed cumulative losses of over nine million factory jobs. Every time we had a Republican for a four-year term in the White House, a net one million factory jobs were lost. Almost six million of those family-sustaining jobs vanished under Bush 1 and Bush 2.
Conversely, Democrats, holding the oval office for 28 years since WWII, can claim a net gain of over seven million manufacturing jobs. President Truman helped create the most and the Kennedy/Johnson reign was second. Obama has seen the fewest positive results, about 200,000 thousand in four years, slightly less than the second term of Reagan.
When trying to determine why the results are the results, “experts” point to all kinds of complicated “macroeconomic” policy initiatives. A simpler explanation follows.
Democrats focus on domestic employment, creating and protecting US jobs, sometimes at the expense of inflation or injecting more regulations.
Republicans put concern for shareholders ahead of employees. Moving manufacturing overseas eliminates unions, and safety or environmental issues. Making products overseas keep profits from US tax collectors.
The two parties have generally not seen eye-to-eye on trade agreements or tariff issues, staking out positions that result in more or less factory jobs in the U.S.
How do Republicans win presidential elections since WWII when they can create so much havoc with your well-paying job? Makes you wonder.
