The Clintonoids at Media Matters are accusing Brent Bozell of spouting lies. The headline on their home page this week was "Conservative media spout economic falsehoods." The odd thing is: Bozell actually sort of sidestepped a statistical battle, and they pasted him anyway. In his interview with George Stephanopoulos, Clinton claimed, "We moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years." Bozell said: "That’s too comical to correct – and for Stephanopoulos, too delicious to challenge."
I think Brent's use of "comical" means that Clinton was not intending to cite chapter and verse of the Census charts. He was doing the petulant policy equivalent of nanny-nanny-boo-boo, I was so much better than you. He didn't mean LITERALLY he was 100 times better, bringing charts and graphs like Ross Perot. But to the Media Matters crowd, everything Clinton says is automatically a statement of verifiable fact. Simon Maloy of MMFA, who perhaps should be known by his economic guru ("In Paul Krugman, We Should Trust") contended:
The presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush actually saw a dramatic net increase in the number of impoverished Americans, whereas Clinton's presidency witnessed an even more dramatic net decrease.
Citing one Census Bureau measure of poverty, Maloy added:
The number of poor Americans grew by more than 6 million between 1981 and 1992 -- while decreasing by 7.6 million between 1993 and 2000 -- so Clinton's statement was, in fact, a sizable understatement of the difference. If the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations could claim a net decrease of 70,000 people below the poverty level, Clinton would be numerically correct in claiming that his administration had "moved 100 times as many people out of poverty."
He notes his chart says there were 31.8 million below poverty in 1981, and then by 1992, the final year of Bush One, it had risen to 38.4 million. By contrast under Clinton on this Census measure, the number below the poverty level dropped from 39.2 million to 31.5 million. Voila! But even by these numbers, Maloy is not correct that the presidencies of both Reagan and Bush saw a big increase in "impoverished Americans." The Census link Maloy used is presently not working, but the numbers in 1981 and 1988 are almost the same. So Maloy’s playing cute by merging the conservative president with the squishy tax-hiking one.
But part of the boastful nature of Clinton’s response is the idea that the President alone moves the mountains of poverty. Let’s at least consider also the role of the Congress. One dissident poster at Media Matters played with the Census chart this way:
Under Pres. Reagan from 1981-86 when republicans controlled the senate and democrats the house, the poverty rate decreased slightly from 14.0% to 13.6%.
Democrats regained control of both houses of congress in 1987. From that year until 1994 the poverty rate increased by 8%. In fact, during Clinton's first two years, while leading a democrat controlled congress, the number of Americans below the poverty line was the highest in 30 years, peaking at over 39 million.
Republicans gained control of both houses in the 94 elections. Since then the poverty rate has decreased by 14%, shrinking the poverty rolls by over 2 million people...
During the term of Pres.Bush Sr. the poverty rate was 13.8%. During Clinton's first 4 years the rate was 14.3%. Since republicans took over congress the rate has been 12.6%.
One massive factor in these Census numbers, I would guess, is the welfare reform Clinton signed -- and would he have signed that without a Republican Congress? One tome we used to cite quite a bit at MRC, Ed Rubinstein's Right Data, made the point that the one stubborn case of poverty in the Reagan years were the single-mother families that remained on welfare.
Conservatives have not been in the habit of charging the poor got poorer in the Clinton years. For liberals, it can never be accepted that poor didn't get poorer with a Republican in the White House. But the problem with using the Census chart on the poverty line is that the Census measure didn't include government benefits and other real-world economic factors that would push more of the poor over the poverty-line measure. Maloy's game also excluded the consideration that the American population keeps increasing -- hence the dissident's focus on the actual poverty rate rather than the numbers. See the latest from Robert Rector at Heritage for his Census/poverty analysis.
