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From the Washginton DC Examiner

The White House says the economic surge that began five and a half years ago on President Bush's watch is more robust than the much-touted expansion during the Clinton administration.

"This is a much stronger expansion in a lot of ways," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told The Examiner. "It's much deeper and more measured."

Let's look at this statement more carefully, shall we?

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, Clinton's expansion laster from March 1991 to March 2001. Bush's expansion started in November 2001.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, US GDP in chained dollars was $7.048 trillion in March 1991 and 9.875 trillion in March 2001. Using the standard Compound Growth rate formula, Clinton's annual compound growth rate was 3.4%.

The US chained GDP was $9.910 trillion in November 2001 and $11.513 trillion in the 4th quarter of 2006. That gives Bush's economy a compound annual growth rate of 3%.

Clinton 1, Bush 0.

About all of those great jobs under Bush, let's compare Bush's job creation to all other economic expansions of the last 40 years.

Clinton 2 Bush 0

How about growth of Federal Debt outstanding? One president controlled spending, one didn't. Guess which one. Here's a graph of the year-over year percent change in total federal debt outstanding.

Clinton 3 Bush 0

How about growth in wages? According the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances for 1998, the change is apparent:

In the 1998 survey, inflation-adjusted mean and median family incomes continued the upward trend between the 1992 and 1995 surveys; they also surpassed the levels observed in the 1989 survey toward the end of the previous expansion....

From 1995 to 1998, the proportion of families with incomes of $50,000 or more rose from one-fifth to 33.8%, while the proportion with incomes below $10,000 fell about one-sixth to 12.6%.

And from the 2001 survey:

Between 1998 and 2001, inflation-adjusted family incomes rose notably faster than they did in the 1995-98 period. The median rose 9.6% percent (2.5 percent during the 1995-98 period) and the mean rose 17.4% (12.2 during the 1995-98 period).

Compare this to the 2004 survey:

The survey shows that, over the 2001-04 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes continued to trend up, rising 1.6%, whereas the mean value fell 2.3 percent....These results stand in contract ot the strong and broad gains seen for the period 1998 and 2001 surveys and to the smaller but similarly broad gains between the 1995 and 1998 surveys.

Under Clinton, the median family income increased from 27,900 in 1992 to 32.7 thousand in 1995, 33,400 in 1998 and 39,900 in 2001. Over the same period inflation increased 28%, making the total inflation adjusted gain 15%. Average income increased from $44,000 in 1992, to $47,500 in 1995, to $53,100 in 1998 to $68,000 in 2001 for an inflation adjusted increase of 23%.

In fact, aside from corporate profits, this recovery has, well, sucked.

So, are you better off now than you were 7 years ago?