Population in poverty in 2001: 31.6 mil
Population in poverty in 2008: 36.5 mil
Holy crap! That's 4.9 million more people! But guess what?
Population in 2001: 285.1 mil
Population in 2007: 302.0 mil (approx. based on 301 mil estimate for 7/2007)
So...
Percent population in poverty in 2001: 11.1%
Percent population in poverty in 2008: 12.1%
In other words, not a huge change. Esp. considering the bubble. The fact that they'd even represent it as an absolute number instead of a percentage is highly suspect. The college cost one is also fishy.
College cost in 2001: $3164/yr
College cost in 2008: $5192/yr
But what was the growth rate prior to 2001? Using this report, which expresses costs in constant 2006 dollars...
[
www.collegeboard.com]
It looks like the link you posted is using the tuition + fees cost at 4 year public universities. If you scroll down to the tables, the increase over the 5-year interval from 01/02 to 06/07 was indeed on of the largest in recent history: 55%. But at the same time, the increase for private 4 year universities was among the lowest in recent history: 28%. If you break it down by year, the largest single-year increases happened in 03/04 (13%) and 04/05 (10%). Since then they've started to tail back down to historical levels (6% in 06/07 vs. 4-5% prior to the 01/02 school year).
I'm no Bush fan, but it's a stretch to lay all those stats at his feet.