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To: Square_Dealings who wrote (60233)	10/26/2000 4:33:09 PM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116790

More Gore-Clinton lies -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2000 WorldNetDaily.com Remember Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic national Convention in August? I admit, it was fairly unmemorable. He made, however, one comment that he has repeated ad nauseam for the last eight years that despite being without any factual basis whatsoever, has never, to my knowledge been challenged in public before today. In addition, this lie has become a cornerstone of Al Gore's campaign for the presidency -- and, once again, neither his Republican opponent, nor my "watchdog" colleagues in the media have ever bothered to correct the record. Clinton bemoaned in that convention speech how "interest rates were high" when he took office. In other speeches he has frequently mentioned that one of his great successes as president was creating an economic climate that fostered lower interest rates. Gore, too, is fond of saying, "This administration's 1993 economic plan ... has sparked a major drop in interest rates since President Clinton and I took office." This was a constant theme repeated by the candidates and all their surrogates during the 1996 presidential election campaign, and it remains an important accomplishment to Gore in 2000. There's just one problem. It is flatly, unequivocally and provably false. In fact, interest rates were at a 10-year low at the end of 1992, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. Oh, yes, they had demagogued fairly successfully in the previous year about how dreadful the U.S. economy was. And, perhaps, now people have actually come to believe it. But interest rates have never been lower than they were when Clinton took office in January 1993. They remained low through the first nine months of the new administration. But they began to rise after Clinton's economic plan was passed and soared during 1994 as Hillary Clinton's one-size-fits-all national health-care proposal was being debated. Interest rates peaked as the first Republican Congress in 40 years was elected in 1994. They began falling soon after and continued until Clinton "shut down the government" in 1996. They remained fairly stable until the so-called "balanced budget bills" were passed in 1998, when they started to fall. And they began to rise again when those budget caps were ignored by Congress and the president beginning last year. Now that's the reality of interest rates. You can see it for yourself in the accompanying chart using the yield on one-year treasuries as the constant benchmark. Click for full image. Here are some more comparisons: Jan. 1993 Jan. 1995 Sept. 2000 Fed Discount Rate 3.00% 5.25% 6.66% Prime 6.00% 9.00% 9.50% 1-Year T-Bills 3.52% 6.86% 6.07% 5-Year T-Notes 5.63% 7.77% 5.86% 30-Year T-Bonds 6.03% 8.00% 5.87% No matter what standard you want to use, it is simply indefensible to suggest that interest rates have declined during the Clinton-Gore administration. Furthermore, there seems to be direct and compelling evidence to suggest that specific actions by this administration have actually driven interest rates substantially higher during the last eight years. The most remarkable characteristic of both Clinton and Gore is their ability to lie about their accomplishments without shame, guilt, remorse or embarrassment. But even more remarkable is their ability to get away with such fraud and deception. No one holds them accountable -- not the press, not even their political opponents! The same argument was made by both Clinton and Gore in 1996, and Sen. Bob Dole let them get away with it. It may not have made any difference in the election results had he challenged their statements, because, after all, Clinton and Gore had raised more money in their re-election bid, partly as a result of illegal campaign financing methods including the acceptance of foreign money. But it's still worth pointing out. No one calls them on their lies. Now, I admit that keeping up with the lies of Clinton and Gore is more than a full-time occupation. But this one -- on something as traceable and public as interest rates -- is in a category of its own. Let the record show, once and for all, the economic policies of Clinton and Gore resulted not in lower interest rates, but in higher ones. worldnetdaily.com