The next day, he blamed Democrats in Congress. For several months, economic indicators have pointed toward a slowdown, and now many Americans are starting to feel its impact. The stock market is causing worries, high energy prices are straining family budgets and some workers and small-business people have been directly affected by layoffs and slowing retail sales. But the economic news is not universally bad. The Labor Department reported that 135,000 jobs were created in February, and the unemployment rate remained low at 4.2 percent.
Retail sales remain relatively strong, particularly for big-ticket items like cars.
Almost certainly, given the growth in jobs, the economy is not now in a recession. But Mr. Bush and his advisers clearly decided a while back that the best shot they had for getting the public to support and Congress to approve a large tax cut was to argue that the measure was essential to bolster a sagging economy. Early in his presidential campaign, in December 1999, when the economy was on a roll, Mr. Bush outlined his tax plan to the Chamber of Commerce in Des Moines and suggested that economists might be wrong in forecasting continued economic growth. In some school districts, there is a recession, and this country needs to do something about it early, before it's too late. He always used the term in the context of what he called a crisis in the nation's public schools.