PERRspectives: Jeb Bush's 4 Percent Fraud
"As the historical record shows, the economy almost always does better with a Democrat in the Oval Office. (As the Washington Post noted in 2012, it does better still when Democrats control Congress, too.) In general, the economy has grown faster, job creation increased more quickly, incomes expanded more rapidly, and stock market returns accelerated when the country voted blue. In their 2014 paper, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson chalked up the Democrats' success to "mostly 'good luck,' with perhaps a touch of 'good policy.'"
But for would-be President Jeb Bush to ring the bell at 4 percent growth annually, he'll have to be better lucky than good. It's possible that he could inherit a booming economy from President Obama, who despite unending Republican obstructionism, rescued the American economy from the brink where George W. Bush left it. But history is working against Jeb in more ways than one. His economic team includes such right-wing luminaries as Glenn Hubbard, Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow, the men who helped Dubya deliver the worst 8-year economic performance since VJ Day. And James Glassman, the man credited as the inspiration for Jeb's "Four Percent Solution" was the author of a 2000 book that sounds like the punch line of another Monty Python joke."
