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Bush administration economic and fiscal policies have left the nation with anemic job growth and ballooning deficits. Democrats have alternatives that can reverse the trends and produce both growth and progressivism. At last summer's Democratic Convention, the Democratic Leadership Council brought together some of the nation's foremost economic thinkers. They explained how a Kerry administration can build on Clintonism and save the economy. Here are excerpts from three of the presentations.

ROGER ALTMAN

Clintonism made the Democratic Party stand for rising jobs, rising income, fiscal discipline, enlightened trade, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and welfare reform, among other policies.

When we contrast those achievements with what the Republicans stand for today, we see completely different results. By pursuing policies that are inhospitable to maximum economic performance, the Bush administration has achieved weak results by almost every economic measure. The central issue in this election is whether we stay on the Bush track, which is radical and wrong, or return to the basic centrist economic principles that led to the prosperity of the 1990s.

We all know that government does not directly create jobs, income or wealth; the private sector is the engine of growth and prosperity. But government can promulgate policies that are conducive to successful economic performance. During most of the 1990s our government did that. It contributed to the remarkable prosperity that affected all income categories of Americans, including our poorest citizens.

Six basic principles underlie the Clinton economic success story. I don't really think of them as Democratic principles or Republican principles, but as commonsense centrist principles. They are: sound budgeting; a tax policy that concentrates on middle-income and working American families; a health care policy that finally insures most Americans and lowers health cost inflation; true education reform and the funding that goes with it; an enlightened trade policy; and stable American relations in the world community. Those six principles are quite simple and fundamental. But the Bush administration has departed from every single one of them. Let's review the record:

Growth. Measured from November 2001, the beginning of the current recovery (as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research), our economy is experiencing the slowest recovery growth in 70 years.

Fiscal policy. The Bush administration inherited an approximately $5.5 trillion 10-year cumulative surplus (according to Goldman Sachs). It has produced approximately the same sized 10-year cumulative deficit in only 3 1/2 years. That's the worst record in proportionate terms since George Washington.

Spending. According to The Wall Street Journal, spending since President Bush took office has risen 8.2 percent on a compound annual rate basis. During the eight Clinton years the figure was 3.2 percent.

Exports. Bush is on his way to being the first president ever to see a decline in real exports. That's astonishing, in view of world population and trade growth.

Jobs. Since the beginning of the recovery, our economy is down about 5.6 million jobs compared with what a normal recovery would have produced.

Standard of living. This is the most important index -- real family income. It has declined about $1,500 per average American family since Bush took office, because average American families are paying, on average, $1,000 more for energy; $3,500 more for health care; and $1,200 (35 percent) more for college.

Contrast that with the Clinton record. On growth, over the eight years of the Clinton administration, the economy grew 3.6 percent. Bush to date: 2.7 percent.

On the budget: Clinton produced the first balanced budget in 40 years, followed by actual surpluses and the first serious pay-down of the national debt in living memory. On spending, as mentioned previously: an 8.2 percent increase under Bush versus 3.2 percent under Clinton. On jobs, the numbers are truly astounding: The Clinton administration oversaw the creation of 23.5 million jobs over eight years and saw a substantial number of net new jobs created every single year. On family incomes, an average $7,200 per family increase. And on stock prices, for example, we know that the Clinton years were far better on average than we've seen since Bush took office, even putting aside the bubble period.

The contrast between the Bush and Clinton policies, and the Bush and Clinton economic results, is stark. Again, it shows what a strong connection exists between the economic principles followed and the economic results. We should keep in mind the fact that Sen. John Kerry, if elected president, would follow the same fundamental principles (adjusted for this decade) as those of the Clinton era.

Task No. 1 for a Kerry administration would be to rebuild confidence among consumers, businesses, and investors. Right now, confidence is obviously fragile, whether in hiring, the performance of stock prices, or the fear premium in oil prices. Rebuilding confidence means having plans to get our enormous deficits under control, to ease international tensions and to rebuild historical alliances, and selecting an economic team that inspires confidence.

The two candidates have a profound difference on budget policy. Kerry has proposed to return to the two central budget laws that this nation lived under during the 1990s. The first is the pay-as-you-go system, which requires that every tax cut or spending increase must be offset by a spending cut or tax increase to make the effect a deficit-neutral one.

The second is the system of caps on nondefense discretionary spending. Any increases in this category of spending cannot exceed the rate of inflation. If they do, an automatic, across-the-board cut in the same category is implemented to bring the total back down to the inflation-based cap. Because we lived by these rules during the Clinton years, we saw federal spending rise only 3.2 percent. In the Bush years, it has already risen by almost three times that amount. Even if you exclude increased defense and homeland security costs, federal spending has risen about 2 1/2 times as much under Bush.

Kerry favors reinstating these laws and living under them. He has said that he would sacrifice even his own initiatives, if necessary, to abide by them -- something quite remarkable for a presidential candidate to say. Bush, on the other hand, fiercely opposes both these rules. He has been fighting hammer and tong on Capitol Hill to avoid a reinstatement of "pay-as-you-go." Nothing better illustrates the profound differences in fiscal policy than the two approaches of the candidates on these two issues.

On growth and on jobs, Kerry's theme is competitiveness and lowering the costs of doing business for American employers -- so they can retain the jobs they have and create new high-paying jobs. That means, for example, eliminating the payroll tax costs of all new jobs in manufacturing and other areas vulnerable to outsourcing for two years through his new job tax credit and the corporate tax overhaul involved in it. It also means reducing health care cost inflation through his health care proposal and opening up the federal employees' health benefit program to small businesses.

It means reducing energy costs by finally putting in place, for the first time since OPEC I in 1974, a serious energy policy that will reduce our dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf. Kerry has also proposed cutting the corporate tax rate, in round numbers, from 35 percent to 33 percent. It means increasing the number of college graduates by 1 million over the next five years through his four-year, refundable college tax credit.

These are the basic policies that this country needs. They're not liberal policies; they're not tax-and-spend policies. They are classic centrist ones. Contrast these to the Bush approach, which is not at all conservative, but radical.

Roger Altman, formerly deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, is chairman of Evercore Partners, an investment banking and private equity firm.

ROBERT J. SHAPIRO

In more than a half-century there has never been a time when the long-term job picture for Americans was more clouded than it is today. The basic link between how fast the economy grows and how many jobs it creates seems to have changed.

The 2000-01 recession reduced real gross domestic product by less than one-half of 1 percent, but it cut private-sector jobs by more than 2 million, or almost 3 percent. That's four to five times the relative job losses seen in the recessions of 1990-91, or of 1981-82, when every half-percent drop in GDP reduced private employment by just two-thirds to three-quarters of 1 percent.

Thirty-one months into the current recovery, we have 1.8 million fewer jobs than when the recession began and barely more jobs than when the recession ended. That doesn't usually happen, and it's not how it's supposed to be. Thirty-one months into the expansions of Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan we had created millions and millions of new jobs.

If Sen. John Kerry wins the White House, he will help create millions of new jobs. But it won't be easy, because healthy economic growth no longer translates automatically into strong job creation.

President George W. Bush may not have caused all the job losses -- but he didn't do anything about the problem when it occurred. Democrats will do better because they understand what's happening and because they care: They know they must do everything possible to address the problem.

We're dealing with a new economic deck today, one based on almost 15 years of sweeping economic changes across the globe.

The first change, of course, is the very fact that there is a global economy. For 45 years, from the end of World War II, the world was divided into two blocs that had, economically, virtually nothing to do with each other. Our side consisted of the developed market economies with advanced technologies, innovation, capital, and educated workers. The other side included the centrally planned states of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and India, with huge stores of untapped natural resources and labor.

For the first time in history, these two camps are now substantially one global economic system. If economics were geology, this would be a tectonic shift. As the dust is settling, we find ourselves competing in an economic system with almost twice the number of potential workers and 25 percent more producers than there were 10 years ago.

Second, as a true global economy began to emerge, we also made radical changes in the way we conduct global economic business. Go back 10 years and remember what we did: We created the World Trade Organization and then told anybody who wanted to join that they had to open up their markets one by one to more foreign investment and more domestic competition. Everybody wanted to join.

As countries like China and India have liberalized, they've become more efficient, putting new pressure, say, on apparel makers and workers in places like Thailand, Korea, and Mexico. The upshot is that resources in those countries began to shift a little, out of apparel and into other sectors -- say, electronics in Korea, or oil drilling services in Mexico. That makes the competition a little stiffer in those markets. Resources shift again a little out of those markets, exerting a little new pressure on, say, Italian and American electronics makers and French and American oil service firms.

Now take that story and repeat it in scores of markets for different goods and services in scores of countries. You have the makings of another tectonic shift. This time it is in the intensity of competition, especially because the new competition is coming from countries whose costs -- especially labor -- are a small fraction of ours. This is what the WTO process has done.

When markets work, and companies come under intense competitive pressure, the toughest thing for firms to deal with is prices. With so much competition, they can't raise prices. Competition keeps prices down or lowers them. That's what most American businesses have been up against for the past several years. Their costs have increased: Health care costs are up 50 percent, energy costs are up 40 percent, and pension costs are up more than 20 percent. But their prices have not risen and in some cases have been forced down.

What do you do when your costs go up and you can't raise your prices much? You cut other costs, starting with labor, your biggest cost.

When it comes to cutting labor costs, there's a new option for businesses in advanced economies like ours. That's because we're living through yet another important shift -- a technological shift based on the spread across the world of computerization and the Internet. The liberalization of markets in countries like China and India has led U.S. firms to create networks of business relationships in those markets. And with the Internet and telecom revolution, you can be in constant contact and interaction with new firms in China and India, which now have corps of educated workers who can do a lot of what our workers do. That's the new face of outsourcing.

Under all these new conditions, if a new Democratic administration does what the Bush administration has done -- that is, nothing -- we will not again see the job creation we saw in the 1990s. Instead, we'll have unemployment rates more like Europe's.

Here's what Democrats can do to show they're ready for the 21st century. They should start by doing what the Bush administration hasn't done: Relieve some of the cost pressures on business. For almost four years, health care policy and energy policy have been ignored by the Bush administration, allowing those costs to skyrocket. Kerry has bold programs to address costs in both of those areas, and if they are approved, they will create jobs for years to come.

The vast majority of new jobs come not from large, mature companies, but from young, fast-growing firms. Young firms are also less likely to outsource jobs because they don't have the global relationships that make outsourcing an efficient strategy. So Democrats can do another thing the current administration hasn't done: Help entrepreneurs start new firms and help young firms succeed. Kerry has proposals not for tax breaks for the dividends of large companies, but for reforms in tax policy, credit policy, and regulation, to help young businesses.

A Kerry administration can also help average workers be more competitive and productive through more access to scientific and engineering education, more ongoing training, and universal broadband. The wages of Indian IT programmers won't match ours for many years, but we can help create and preserve jobs at home by raising the overall productivity of our companies and our workers, so they can out-compete our competitors in the other advanced countries. That's a strategy that will create jobs for years to come.

Robert J. Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, is managing director of Sonecon, a consulting and investment banking firm. He served as undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration.

GENE SPERLING

Democrats must be pro-growth progressives. We understand that the private sector will always be the engine of job growth and entrepreneurship, but that government policy can play a critical role in laying the foundation for such growth by investing in our people and promoting fiscal discipline, competition, and innovation. Yet, because we are progressives, we are not satisfied with growth unless it leads to a higher standard of living and greater opportunities for all Americans.

Pro-growth progressives look at John F. Kennedy's statement that a rising tide will lift all boats not as an automatic assumption, but as our fundamental aspiration. The goal of policy is to ensure that our policies both raise the tide and lift all boats.

The pro-growth progressive is not comforted by the conservative's claim that everyone in America already has the ability to rise, when we know that simply by the accident of their birth, so many poor children are born with overwhelming statistical odds against them. We are not happy unless we can truly say our economy rewards work and allows for upward mobility. We strive for policies that promote growth, competition, and innovation while ensuring that everyone can participate in and benefit from economic growth.

President Clinton said at the Democratic convention that strength and wisdom are not in opposition. Growth and progressivism are not in opposition, either. In fact, the right progressive policies can be essential to a growth strategy. Let's review a few examples.

Progressive fiscal discipline. When Democrats design fiscal policies, we don't just mandate fiscal discipline and then say, "Once we get things in order, we'll be progressives." We include the progressivism right from the start. In 1993, the Clinton administration, in which I served, did not ask the poor to bear the burden of our deficit reduction plan. Indeed, we passed a package that reduced the deficit while increasing food stamp benefits; expanding the Women, Infants, and Children program; and more than doubling the annual Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for millions of working families. To strike this balance, we asked those who were financially most fortunate to bear the burden. We believed that those at the top would gain the most if we strengthened the economy. And that is just what happened.

If you examine the fiscal policies of the Bush administration, you see the opposite approach. Not only have the administration's tax cuts exploded the deficit, but they have been extremely ineffective at spurring job growth. Why? Because the Bush administration insisted on giving large amounts of money to those who already had the most. Basic economics tells you that if you give money to people living paycheck by paycheck, they're going to put that money back into the economy. And when you help state governments avoid raising taxes and tuition, it keeps money in the economy. These approaches would have not only stayed consistent with our progressive values but would have helped to jump-start job growth without mortgaging our fiscal future.

Rewarding work. Democrats have a policy of rewarding work -- making work pay. We help more families by increasing the EITC, by having a reasonable minimum wage, by ensuring that workers don't lose their health care insurance when they change jobs. These policies build a more stable workforce, increase employee retention, and give more people a chance to move up. They are absolutely progressive and absolutely pro-growth -- there is no tradeoff.

Building the workforce of the future. When we look out at our future workforce, the numbers give cause for some alarm. This decade, the number of jobs requiring at least a bachelor's or associate's degree will grow almost twice as fast as all other jobs. Yet, as the baby boomers retire, the growth in both the size and education level of our workforce will slow dramatically. The skill gap is particularly acute in math, science, and engineering. The United States has fallen from third in the world in 1975 to 15th in the world today in the share of 24-year-olds with natural science or engineering degrees.

Yet for the pro-growth progressive, one eye-popping statistic speaks volumes: The entire projected gap in science, math, and engineering degreeholders would be completely closed if women and minorities went into those professions in the same percentages as white males.

Pursuing the progressive goal of getting more minorities and women to seek professions in math, science, and engineering is absolutely essential to meeting the economic goal of building the skilled workforce of the future. Research shows that girls in fourth grade are more likely to like science and math than boys, but by eighth grade they have fallen behind. Sen. John Kerry has proposed a new $300 million innovation fund to get girls and minorities engaged in science and math in middle school; he's put forward a "college completion initiative" to ensure that more kids not only enter college but graduate with degrees; and he has called on the National Science Foundation to support more Ph.D.s in math, science, and engineering. These are the types of forward-looking policies that are absolutely progressive and absolutely consistent with being pro-growth.

Progressive savings. One final example: In the United States today, we have two Americas when it comes to having a chance to save and invest in one's future. If you are lucky enough to be in the top 35 percent tax bracket, it's candy land. You receive 35 cents on every dollar you invest in your 401(K), and you probably receive a generous match from your employer. Plus, you can choose from the laundry list of other savings options: 529s, self-employed IRAs, the list goes on.

For everybody else, we have an upside-down system. If you're in the 15 percent tax bracket, you get only 15 cents for every dollar you save. If you're one of the 34 million workers who does not earn enough to owe income tax, you get no incentives to save at all.

In short, our system works on the following premise: The easier it is for you to save, the more we help you; the harder it is for you to save, the less we help you. Does that make sense? Hardly. We need a progressive savings strategy that turns this system right-side up -- that truly expands opportunities to save, create wealth, and own a piece of the rock, and that strengthens our economy as a result.

The Bush administration has the opposite vision, and its policies would only exacerbate the upside-down nature of our system. Taken together, its tax policies and its aspirations -- zero estate tax, zero capital gains tax, zero dividends tax, and new Retirement Savings Accounts and Lifetime Savings Accounts -- would move us to a system where those who already have wealth could watch their assets grow virtually tax-free, while hard-working people would never get a chance to save. It would lead us to a situation where a millionaire managing his assets would pay virtually nothing, while a fireman who chose to go out and do an extra hour of work would see his taxes go up.

These are some of the major policies that again show that increasing economic growth while promoting progressive values go hand in hand.

Gene Sperling, who was President Clinton's national economic adviser, is director of economic programs at the Center for American Progress. He is working on a book Called The Pro-Growth Progressive.