Economic Policy

SAN FRANCISCO - Six million people will lose their right to be paid overtime under new federal regulations scheduled to go into effect in August, according to a new report by a liberal research group. Nearly 2 million workers who are "team leaders" will be ineligible for overtime pay under the new rules, along with about 920,000 workers without college degrees who will be reclassified as "learned professionals," according to the Economic Policy Institute report. Among the 3 million additional workers who will become ineligible are some who earn more than $100,000 a year as well as some teachers, computer programmers and supervisors, the report contends.

WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday distanced himself from his economic advisers' claim that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year, enough to more than erase all of the job losses incurred during his first term. Bush declined to endorse the jobs estimate during a joint Oval Office appearance with Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Asked about the projection, Bush said, "I think the economy is growing. And I think it's going to get stronger." Bush's comment came a day after Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans refused to publicly endorse the job estimate, issued nine days ago by Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

DID PRESIDENT Bush lie to the American people in his State of the Union address when he said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? Technically, no. Why? Because "the statement that he made was indeed accurate," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 13. "The British government did say that." Ms. Rice speaks the literal truth, just as her boss does, to distort what is meaningful. Outright lying is not the administration's modus operandi; willful deception is. Like the bank robber who leaves a distinctive mark at the scene of the crime, Mr. Bush's statement on Iraq shows his telltale MO. Moreover, duping the nation into war is only one case of the pattern of calculated deception that has gone on since the outset of his administration.

WASHINGTON - Dismissing criticism that his Green Party candidacy helped elect President Bush in 2000, Ralph Nader said yesterday that he is weighing a bid for the White House next year. The veteran consumer activist, whose third-party presidential campaign drew 2.8 million votes in the last election, criticized Democrats for not aggressively challenging the Bush administration's economic policies and its handling of corporate fraud. The party's candidates, he said, have not shown that they are a sound alternative to Bush.

WASHINGTON -- With the impending departure of Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the famously frugal White House budget chief, President Bush will be taking on a struggling economy and soaring federal deficits with virtually a brand-new economic policy team. Daniels' exit will deprive Bush of his fiercest advocate for spending restraint at the very time that the administration is trying to persuade Congress to pass a large package of new tax cuts that will take an even deeper bite out of the federal budget.

WASHINGTON - Facing a weak economy as he eyes a 2004 re-election bid, President Bush shook up his economic team yesterday, pushing out Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who failed to inspire confidence in the financial markets or in the administration's ability to sustain a recovery. O'Neill, the first Bush Cabinet member to leave office, resigned under pressure, along with the president's top economic adviser, Lawrence B. Lindsey. The twin departures were an acknowledgement that the administration has not made a clear and compelling case for its economic strategy.

IN YEARS to come, it is a certainty that Democrats will be forever crowing that one of their guys was in the White House during two terms of unprecedented economic boom in the 1990s. Conversely, Republicans will dismissively assert that this former occupant of the executive mansion merely had the dumb luck to take office when the nation's economy went on a record-breaking run. However posterity may come to view this debate, history will not be able to deny Bill Clinton one significant credit for the economy's performance -- he didn't mess it up. In fact, the main components of the Clinton administration's economic policy -- trust in Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's interest rate massage therapy, promotion of free trade and expanded global markets and using growing tax revenues to achieve the first balanced budget in decades -- were just the right accompaniment for a white-hot stock market.

ECONOMICS AND monetary policy are not topics most students tackle every day, but they are paramount for those taking part in the Fed Challenge. A team of Liberty High School freshmen went to the Federal Reserve Bank in Baltimore last week to test their knowledge of economics in the annual event, which gives students the opportunity to learn more about the national economy and the Federal Reserve System's role. Andy Deitchman, Brad Dyjak, Andrew Gackenbach, Tuan Huynh, Myles Kitchen, Patrick Linz and Graham Long spent weeks researching, gathering and analyzing economic information to prepare their presentation.

WASHINGTON -- The new economy ... the words conjure many exciting images: the Internet fueling the booming stock market, the lowest unemployment rate in decades, and rates of economic growth we only dreamed of a few years ago. But this image is tarnished by the growing problem of income inequality. Recently, numerous reports have shown that the gap between the top and the bottom of the income scale is greater than at any time since the gap was tracked, back in the 1940s. A new report by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that while the gap grew more slowly in the 1990s, the best economy in 30 years did not stop inequalitys inexorable climb.

NEW YORK -- As the campaign leading to next year's elections intensifies, the Republican Party finds itself deprived of a crucial weapon -- economic policy.This is unprecedented in recent U.S. history, as the economy has been the Republicans' strong suit, and they have usually been able to best the Democrats on the issue of fiscal management.This situation is all the more extraordinary because conservative economists should find plenty to criticize in the Clinton economic boom.In the early 1990s, the Demo-crats appropriated many key ideas previously advocated by conservatives: fiscal discipline, low taxes, reduced regulatory oversight, individual choice and small government.