Politics & Power Quote by Marcy Kaptur

A line like this is built to land as a gut-level indictment, not a spreadsheet. Kaptur’s “Since President Bush took office” pins responsibility to a clear starting gun: inauguration day as the moment the clock starts and the damage becomes traceable. It’s a classic opposition move, but an effective one because it compresses a messy economy into a moral narrative of cause and effect. The passive voice of “we have lost” spreads the pain across the country while still reserving blame for one administration. Everyone is in the “we,” but only one person is named.

“3 million” is doing double duty. It’s big enough to feel national, not regional, and specific enough to sound audited. The number signals seriousness while sparing the listener the details that might complicate the charge (sector shifts, productivity, global downturns). That’s the point: a political statistic should feel like a verdict.

The most revealing word is “good.” Kaptur isn’t only mourning unemployment; she’s distinguishing between jobs worth building a life on and the shakier, lower-wage, benefit-light work that often replaces them. Subtext: the economy may be “growing,” but regular people are sliding backward. In the Bush-era context, with debates over outsourcing, manufacturing decline, and tax-cut priorities, “good jobs” becomes code for a disappearing middle-class bargain - and a warning that policy choices are quietly rewriting what work is allowed to buy.