washtimes.com
October 18, 2000
Unearned bragging rights for
prosperity
Allan Ryskind
Will George W. Bush and Richard Cheney say anything on
behalf of congressional Republicans in countering the
Gore-Lieberman battle cry that the Democrats have blessed us
with the most glowing prosperity in history? They haven't so far.
The Democratic nominees are driving the "we created the good
times" theme home in the debates, along the campaign trail, in
press releases and in interviews. But there's barely a retort from
the GOP ticket, and congressional Republicans are deliberately
denied any credit.
The Democrats, however, not only don't deserve a dollop of
bragging rights, but they should be scalded for nearly steering
the nation toward an economic catastrophe. And House and
Senate Republicans, despite all the failings conservatives have
chronicled, should get a few kudos for salvaging the economy.
How quickly we forget.
The Clinton-Gore team pretended during the 1992 election
that they were taking their party in a more moderate direction.
But they no more acted like "New Democrats" in their first two
years in office than Leonid Brezhnev acted like a "New
Communist." Bill Clinton and Al Gore not only crusaded for
getting self-professed gays in the military (a policy killed by the
Congress, but which Mr. Gore has pledged to reopen), but they
pumped for the highest tax increase in history, an additional $72
billion BTU tax, a special "stimulus" spending package and a
complete takeover of the health-care system, one-seventh of the
U.S. economy. This is moderation?
House and Senate Republicans, although in a minority in both
houses, scaled down the tax increase, stopped the BTU tax, shut
down the stimulus package and stifled Hillarycare. Thus, the
GOP's defensive line — deliberately slighted by Bush-Cheney —
has proved to be a key to the golden times we've been
experiencing. If Clinton-Gore had had their way, the stock
market most likely would have been swooning rather than
soaring during the roaring '90s.
The tax increase of 1993 has not been the key to the
percolating economy, as Democrats insist; instead, it was the
Republican capacity to put an end to the Democrats' big-spend,
high-tax policies, and then enact crucial economic and other
reforms with the acquiescence of a reluctant president.
When the GOP swept both houses of Congress in 1994, the
Republicans went on the offensive. Then — and only then — did
Clinton-Gore move to the center. The middle-class tax cut (the
$500 per child tax credit), a balanced budget, welfare reform, the
30 percent capital gains tax reduction, estate tax relief, the Roth
IRA, etc., were enacted after the Clinton-Gore election debacle
of 1994, and these were Republican ideas. Most of them
originally contained in the high-profile, but much-maligned
"Contract With America." (But, oh, my, the GOP ticket —
undoubtedly the result of some focus group ravings — can't
mention any of this, even though it would blow the Clinton-Gore
claim to prosperity out of the water.)
It was only when Mr. Clinton —shaking in his boots after the
1994 earthquake — invited Dick Morris to come on board in
early 1995 that Clinton-Gore "went Republican." Clinton-Gore
then staged the "Great Retreat," both rhetorically and
substantively. Mr. Clinton backed off Hillarycare, offered a
"balanced budget" proposal in June 1995 (junking his
deficit-ridden offering of February, but still not good enough for
Republicans), insisted at an October 1995 Houston fund raiser
that "I think I raised them [taxes] too much, too," and
pronounced in his 1996 State of the Union address that "the era
of big government is over." He also embraced, reluctantly, the
Republican tax and welfare reforms, culminating in the 1997
balanced budget deal.
Oh, and about that surplus. Republican Presidents Ronald
Reagan and George Bush, with major assists from congressional
Republicans, won the Cold War so we could enjoy a peace
dividend.
How important has this "dividend" been in balancing the
budget? Two former Clinton defense officials, Bill Perry, who
headed the Defense Department, and John Shalikashvili, the
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed in a
bylined column in The Washington Post on Aug. 10, that the "
'peace dividend,' amounting to about $100 billion a year, has been
a major contributor to the balanced budget that our country now
enjoys."
For my money, this seems like an impressive record. But,
shh, the Bush-Cheney political strategists don't want to let
anyone in on this secret of congressional Republican triumphs.
Allan Ryskind is Human Events' editor at large and a senior
fellow at the National Journalism Center. |
