From Holden:

Tax cuts for the rich fail to produce new jobs in Florida in the same way that they fail to produce jobs on the national level.

State employment figures show that Gov. Jeb Bush has presided over the lowest job-creation rate of any governor since 1970, appearing to call into question his claim that his tax cuts have created new jobs.

Bush, who is proposing $285 million in new tax cuts this year, has for years attributed the state’s creation of new jobs during his tenure to his tax cuts, which have totaled $11 billion since he took office.

“This notion has been proven,” he said during a Jan. 12 news conference. “It has been proven in our state by the economic data that we see.”

But an analysis of statistics from Bush’s Agency for Workforce Innovation shows that every previous governor going back as far as Reubin Askew enjoyed higher job-growth rates than Bush — even though those earlier governors all raised taxes.

Lawton Chiles, Bush’s Democratic predecessor, had an average job growth rate of 2.7 percent over his eight years, compared with Bush’s 1.9 percent over six years.

Republican Bob Martinez, Bush’s former boss, had a 4 percent average over four years.

Democrat Bob Graham had a 4.7 percent average, and Democrat Askew enjoyed a 5.1 percent average.

With the exception of Martinez, each of the previous governors, like Bush, suffered through a recession, with Askew taking the worst hit during the mid-’70s oil crisis that devastated the state’s tourism industry.

Moreover, each of the four previous governors had significant tax increases during his term.

[snip]

Bush, during the rollout of his 2005-06 budget where he again tied his tax cuts to Florida’s job growth, appeared not to know that the other governors had higher growth rates and, in the case of Graham, a higher actual number of jobs created at the same point in his tenure.

“I’m not sure that they had the kind of growth we’ve had,” Bush said of the previous governors’ numbers.

Of course Jebbie had an explantion for why his economic polies failed to produce jobs. And that explanation was: “Waaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

On learning that Askew had chalked up a better job-creation rate than him despite imposing a major tax that businesses despised, Bush said a comparison was unfair.

“There’s a totally different space and time,” Bush said. “You’re trying to compare 2004 with something that happened 30 years ago. I think that probably won’t work from an analytical point of view. The economy, the structure of the economy, the structure of society has changed dramatically.”