Yes, it’s a slow afternoon here in Seattle. Where was this good weather last weekend when I needed it?

John Snow, the Treasury secretary, told The Times of London on Monday that he expected the U.S. economy to add two million jobs before the next election — that is, almost 200,000 per month. His forecast was higher than those of most independent analysts; nothing in the data suggests that jobs are being created at that rate. . . .

[T]o have kept up with the population growth since Mr. Bush took office, the economy would have to add not two million, but seven million jobs by next November.

Mr. Bush’s employment policies would truly have been a success if he had left the job market no worse than he found it. In fact, even his own Treasury secretary thinks he’ll fall five million or so jobs short of that mark. . . .

Congress has given [Bush] everything he has wanted in terms of economic policy, even though that has led to a frightening explosion in federal debt: in the current fiscal year the Bush tax cuts will account for almost $300 billion of a deficit expected to top $500 billion. (If that $300 billion had been used to employ workers directly — a new WPA, anyone? — it would have created six million jobs.)

—— Paul Krugman, “Too Low A Bar”, NYT 24 Oct. 2003

In case you missed the point, Congress has given Bush pretty much every damned thing he’s asked for on the economic front, and the economy still is in the tank. Voodoo economics doesn’t work.

Whereas, y’know, we at least got some pretty decent public art out of the WPA.

But that would mean, like, trusting the gummint with our money. And this is obviously not a government we can trust with our money.