"So much for GOP Swagger"
Op-ed piece by Mark Shields (oddly, absent from web page) in Washington Post. Summary:
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But not content to simply oppose the plan, Republicans rose on the floor of Congress to predict the fall of Western Civilisation and the collapse of the American Dream if the Democrats somehow had their way.
Rep. Richard Armey (R-Tex.), who used to teach college economics, called the Clinton plan "a recipe for disaster - a defeat for our economy and the well-being of the American People ... The economy will fall, and the deficit will reach another record high."
Texas Sen Phil Gramm, who also used to teach college economics (I think he must have taught Dick Armey), was his usual unequivocal seld: "We are buying a one-way ticket to a recession. I predict that...four years from now, the deficit will be higher than it is today ... hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs because of this plan."
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But Texas Republicans were veritable Polyannas, irrepressible optimists, when compared with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which bills itself as the Diary of the American Dream.
Ever alert to the sensibilities of the Deserving Rich, the Journal's editorial page attacked the Clinton plan "as designed to punish success" and as "this witch's brew of taxes and mandates [which is] poison for the economy."
Predicting that "the deficit will be bigger than ever" and that Clinton's taxes "will raise no new revenues," the worldly wise Journal told the rest of us, so gullible and childlike, that the "truly rich as always will take their refuge in their shelters" and that faced with higher rates, the rich "will arrange their affairs to avoid them."
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But all of us ought ot save a little compassion for our conservative Republican friends and relatives. Encourage them to cheer up, because things will eventually get worse. |
