They've got emergency rooms, don't they? What more do they want?

From that same Wolf Blitzer program Digby linked to below...

BLITZER: Well, on that specific point, Steve Forbes, I'll put up on the screen a comment that Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, made on January 6. She said, "Middle class Americans' paychecks are flat or dropping, while health care costs continue to rise and home heating costs are skyrocketing. And yet the Bush administration is cheerleading policies that help the wealthy while doing nothing to address these fundamental problems." You want to respond to Nancy Pelosi and Gene Sperling?

FORBES: Well, the fact of the matter is, incomes are rising in America, which is why for several years retail sales have beaten expectations across the board. And the fact of the matter is, the economy has created millions of new jobs and the tax cuts are the prime reason for it. Before the tax cuts of May 2003, this economy was stalled after the bubble burst in 2000-2001. The tax cuts got the economy moving, just as they always do when you have rate cuts across the board, which makes it passing strange that the Democrats would hesitate about extending the tax cuts. They worked. BLITZER: Well, and I want to press Gene Sperling on that.

SPERLING: Yeah. Please press me.

BLITZER: Four million new jobs in the last few years. That's better than zero new jobs, right?

SPERLING: That's exactly right. If you want to look at this economy as a football team that was 0-16 and say have they gone to 4- 12, yes. But, Wolf, if you put stuff in any form of historical perspective, I'm sorry, the president's cheerleaders can't respond. Here are the facts.

When you look, Labor Department statistics, average hourly wages and weekly wages are down in the last four years, down in the last two years. If you look at the census, poverty has gone up each year, even in an economic recovery. And the job growth, let's take that, for example. That is what they're bragging about, 4.6 million over the last 2 1/2 years.

What was the average under Bill Clinton over a 2 1/2-year period? About 6 1/2 million. So they're bragging about their tax cuts having job growth, 2 million less over a period than we had in the Clinton era, wages down, poverty up. If that's what they want to say the tax cuts caused, I'll give them all the credit.

BLITZER: The minority whip, Steve Forbes, in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the U.S. Senate, made some similar points, threw out these numbers. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

U.S. SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN (D-IL): Since President Bush took office, prices at the gasoline pump have increased 55 percent, health care premiums 57 percent, winter heating costs 79 percent. Tuition and fees are up 32 percent at four-year private colleges, 57 percent at public colleges.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER; And what the Democrats argue, Steve Forbes, is that those are hidden taxes on the American people.

FORBES: Well, in terms of the poverty rate, that just takes wage income. It does not take in-kind benefits, especially Medicaid, which is a huge benefit for low-income Americans. If you put those in-kind benefits in, this picture takes a much different turn.

This is certainly not your father's GOP. Boasting about medicaid spending as a source of "benefits" for the poor to defend declining purchasing power for the poor is certainly a contrarian idea, but doesn't seem a particularly conservative one. Though maybe he means that the poor can always go to their local, already-crowded, but usually well-heated, hospital emergency room when the oil tank runs empty at home.