Themes Pivot on Economic Reports
Democrats Fault GOP as McCain Assails 'Anti-Growth Agenda'

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 5, 2008

The bleak report on declining payrolls and rising unemployment jolted the presidential campaign yesterday and underscored the primary position the economy has taken in the race.

An economic slump that President Bush recently described as "a rough patch" has become the top concern of both parties -- and a chance for Democrats to link Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, with the policies of the Bush administration.

"It's time the President and John McCain recognize the r-word: reality," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. "For more than a year I have been like Paulette Revere, calling for action to keep the problems from our housing market from spilling over into our economy. After a year of denial and half-measures it is time for this Administration to put ideology aside and get serious about stemming this crisis."

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) talked to reporters on his campaign plane to deliver his economic message. "We are seeing the highest level of first-time unemployment requests in the last three years, and what I think this indicates is the degree to which our economy has contracted, is sliding into recession," he said. "We have seen a failure over the last 7 1/2 years of George Bush's policies, in which basically the answer to every problem are tax cuts to the wealthy. We now see John McCain suggesting that we should be standing on the sidelines and watching the mortgage crisis unfold."

McCain did not mention his earlier concern about bailing out speculators and imprudent risk-takers when he rushed out a statement declaring: "Across this country, many Americans are hurting."

"It is imperative to restore the economic foundations for America's families and small businesses," he continued. "In addition to rapid and targeted help for those families hurt by the mortgage crisis, it is essential to reduce the burdens on businesses and workers by lowering taxes, streamlining regulation, tackling health care costs, opening markets to American goods and helping those workers in need."

The political picture is particularly bleak for him. Traditionally, an economy in recession has virtually foreclosed the possibility of electing a member of the president's party to succeed him. Ray C. Fair, a Yale University economist who has devised a complicated economic formula for predicting election results, now forecasts that the Republican nominee will receive no more than 47.95 percent of the vote in November.

And that assumes positive economic growth in the first nine months of the year. For the first time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke this week suggested that the first half of the year could see an economic contraction.

"This recession is not some random business-cycle event," said Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist and an Obama adviser. "It's the culmination of the last seven years, when incomes were flat, job growth was measly, median income in a boom time actually fell for the first time on record, education costs and energy costs were rising. People were left no margin for error, and here we are."

Facing a gloomy political environment, McCain went on the attack.

"Despite today's news, the Democrats will continue to advance their anti-growth agenda," he said. "The American people cannot afford the Democrats and their economic leadership."