From The Wall Street Journal
Howard Dean, Unpasteurized
By John McClaughry
Campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president, Howard Dean frequently points to his record as Vermont's governor to indicate his fitness for the job. ...
Vermont is a small and liberal state with a population equalling that of Monmouth County, New Jersey. It is also, as Peter Beinart of the New Republic recently observed, "ideologically extreme." Mr. Dean himself aptly remarked ... "In Vermont, politics is much further to the left. A Vermont centrist is an American liberal right now." ...
In his earlier years, he favored directing his department heads to reduce their spending. In later years, he became adept at fund raiding and cost shifting. ...
More pernicious ... was Mr. Dean's financing of his ambitious government health-care programs by shifting a large portion of the costs onto the providers -- hospitals, nursing homes, doctors and dentists. Forced to treat government-sponsored patients often at less than 50 cents on the dollar, hospitals shifted costs to patients covered by private insurance. (Many doctors and dentists opted out of the Medicaid program altogether.)
This cost shift helped to send the cost of health-insurance premiums skyrocketing, causing more businesses and individuals to drop their coverage and go into the state program, thus stimulating a new round of cost shifting and higher premiums. Even so, the legislative joint fiscal office has projected a Medicaid deficit of $95 million by 2008. This mandating of popular benefits without raising taxes to pay for them is a prominent characteristic of Mr. Dean's fiscal record.
On one occasion (1999) Mr. Dean did get the legislature to lower income-tax rates 4% across the board. But aside from that one instance, Mr. Dean gladly spent all he could take in. In Gov. Dean's early years, when he was still restricted by his predecessor's fiscal bailout program, he earned a respectable "B" on the Cato Institute's fiscal responsibility report card. By 2002 his ranking had dropped to "D." During his last eight years Mr. Dean signed into law increases in the sales and use, rooms, meals, liquor, cigarette, and electrical energy taxes. In 1997 he raised the corporate, telecommunications, bank franchise, and gasoline taxes. Dwarfing all of these was his approval of a state education finance "reform" built on a new 1.1% state real property tax. All of the 1997 tax rate increases were justified in the name of property tax relief for some Vermonters, but the relief is rapidly evaporating with ever increasing educational costs. ...
Many Americans are asking what kind of a president Howard Dean would make. Based on his 11 years as governor of Vermont, a reasonable person could fairly conclude that he would not make a very good one. This verdict is not based on his views on particular issues. It is based on a review of his autocratic style, his lack of ability to deal with bureaucratic management and his overwhelming commitment to his own political ambitions rather than to any recognizable principle.
.... But as chief executive of a multi-trillion dollar enterprise and leader of the most powerful nation in a dangerous world, I believe that most Vermonters who have watched him closely as governor would, after sober reflection, agree that as president Howard Dean would be far, far, over his head. |
