From SFGate.com: The Bush administration has cancelled the Labor department’s Mass-Layoffs Statistics program by de-funding it. This program tracks mass layoffs by U.S. companies.
“With very finite discretionary resources, we have to make difficult decisions,” said Mason Bishop, the Labor Department’s deputy assistant secretary for employment training. “We didn’t see how this program was helping workers re-enter the workforce.”
Coincidentally, the same conclusion was reached in 1992 when the first President Bush canceled the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program amid election-year charges that he had bungled handling of the economy.
The program was resuscitated two years later by the Clinton administration.
Now Bush the younger is following in his father’s footsteps, once again deciding that the American people have no real need to know how many mass layoffs are made each month.
“The United States economy is growing again,” Bush declared in a holiday radio address from his Texas ranch. “This economy is strong and it can be stronger.”
And if not, best to just sweep the whole mess under the rug.
Happy New Year, America!
Thanks, BoingBoing.
