The presidency of George W. Bush has been dominated by three major issues: the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the war with Iraq, and the nation's economy.

Most Democrats and in fact, most Americans, gave the president high marks on his handling of the nation's affairs after the 9-11 attacks. In addition, most Americans supported Bush's call to arms to get Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq, even if there are increased questions today about whether the ongoing occupation of Iraq is worth the cost in U.S. lives and in dollars.

But with President Bush seeking re-election only 14 months from now, he will likely be evaluated by American voters primarily for his handling of the nation's economy, just as his father was in 1992. The president, and to some extent, the Republican Party he leads, will be judged by whether the American people feel they are better off now compared to their situation in the 1990s.

Bush and the Republican Party have made some drastic changes in the direction of our government since President Clinton left office. Is the nation better off? You be the judge.

• More than two million private sector job losses have taken place since Bush took office.
• The nation's unemployment rate was 6.2 percent in July, just under the 6.4 percent rate in June that was the nation's highest jobless rate in nine years.
• Since Bush came into office, the U.S. stock market has recorded its steepest decline (11.2 percent) during a president's administration since Herbert Hoover was in office during the start of the Great Depression (29.6 percent).
• Since the 1950s, Bush's presidential term is the only one with a decline in manufacturing output (-1.8 percent).
• The nation is staring down the barrel of a record $480 billion deficit next year - and the president has still not placed the cost of the ongoing occupation of Iraq into the 2004 budget.

Bush's one and only cure-all for the deficit and all of the bad economic news, curiously, is reducing government revenue in the form of the $350 billion tax cut that was implemented this year. He is gambling that the tax cut alone will lead to growth in the economy, and out of the deficit and unemployment quagmire that the nation is in.

"The president has pretty nearly played his cards when it comes to policy moves that can broadly shape the economy by Election Day 2004," said Kevin Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "… If the economy still doesn't pick up enough steam to start producing jobs in the next six months, the president isn't well-positioned to undertake another broad economic initiative. The odds are that we're almost at the point of no return for the next election."

If a "broad economic initiative" means another tax cut, the nation may be better off without it.

A tax cut bill passed by the Republicans in 2001 gave over a third of its
benefits to the top one percent of taxpayers, while the bottom 60 percent of
taxpayers receive only one-forth of the benefits. The new Republican tax bill passed by Congress in May 2003 provides the wealthiest one percent of Americans an average of almost $100,000 in tax breaks each year over the next 4 years, while granting the average middle-income taxpayer less than $100 a year over the next four years.

"The president said recently that 'tax relief creates jobs,' " said Michigan's senior senator, Carl Levin. "If tax cuts automatically create jobs, how does he explain the fact that we've lost about three million jobs since he took office, notwithstanding the fact that he pushed through a huge, trillion dollar-plus tax cut back in 2001? Following the same approach that did not work before doesn't make sense."