Susan....that is an interesting article...I'm posting the entire article, because we may want to see in one year, and then in four years, exactly what either man, and both houses are able to do....
Again, MAYBE this will wake people up and get them to pay attention to the issues that are before all of us, every day. On just one of those issues....oil, gas....don't know about you, but I see here in the NW, and see pictures of many places in the country, large vans and SUV's ALL over the roads....mostly driven by the boomers (1946-1964 is the birth range) and younger, it seems. I believe all are gas guzzlers. Do we want to continue dependence on foreign sources of oil/gas, or drive more efficient cars, or have to use more of our own resources. Or what maybe even better, we have some smart folks devise a cost efficient, inexpensive auto that uses some sort of fuel other than what it currently does.
There are so many issues every day we must address....Hopefully, people are finally realizing the importance of paying attention to them, listening, reading, and voting with some sort of intelligence.
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A Let's-Pretend President
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Let's play pretend. Let's assume that George W. Bush is President-elect. That's a relatively big assumption with all the accusations of voter irregularities in Florida. But, then again, we're just pretending. Okay then, executives should be able to relax. Right? After all, corporate managers had to wince every time Vice President Gore attacked drug, oil, insurance, and other major businesses. The last thing the business world wanted was President Al Gore. So, if Gore is out, the big question has to be: Just how good will Dubya be for corporate America? The answer ought to be, "Pretty damn good." You would guess that regulators will be tamer. Taxes will be lower. Trade will be freer. And civil lawsuits will be scarcer--at least compared with what they've been under President Clinton. "A Bush administration would be friendly-pro-economic growth, and wouldn't hobble business with regulation," predicts Bruce Josten, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We'd also be playing offense more than defense with Bush when it comes to legislation."
Well, maybe. On the margin, that would be true. I think though we all might be too sleep-deprived to see the bigger picture, which is this: The W. years can't possibly be a Golden Era. With such incredibly narrow partisan splits in the House and Senate, Congress will be unwieldy. The margins of control are so thin that no one is in charge on Capitol Hill. The new President will have to cobble together coalitions of Republicans and Democrats to pass anything substantial, which will make every major bill, and many minor bills, a battle. In particular, Bush will have to woo and win over the 30 or so conservative Democrats who comprise the House's so-called Blue Dog caucus. That could well happen, particularly on budget matters. "We will be able to work very closely with him," says Texas Rep. Charles Stenholm, a leading Blue Dog.
But even the most concerted schmoozing won't help Bush fix two of government's most troubled programs, Medicare and Social Security. The problem: Despite all the pledges and proposals, there's no consensus on what will work. As a consequence, reforms of derivative issues like adding a prescription drug program to Medicare and improving the service of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) will also be tough to handle. Bush would almost surely face disappointment on taxes as well. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has grumbled that an income-tax cut as large as Bush's ten-year, $1.3 trillion plan might be too stimulative for an economy that's just begun to slow to a manageable level. To eke a victory, Bush would have to settle for less. In fact, on almost anything that isn't incrementalism, the Bush administration will be hard-pressed to succeed. That's the real lesson of this week's nail-biter election.
Sure, the direction and tone of the Bush administration ought to be a tonic to the corporate world, which has had to struggle for eight years to get much of what it wanted from D.C. What's more, a lot of the industries that wore black hats in recent years would soon be wearing caps of a softer hue. Pharmaceutical companies won't have to sweat price controls. Firearm manufacturers won't have to worry about more gun control. Cigarette executives won't need to look over their shoulders for another federal lawsuit. Oil and gas companies can hope for tax benefits. Antitrust enforcement would be somewhat more benign. And accountants can feel free to consult whomever and however they wish. Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission will have a lighter touch than Arthur Levitt's.
But the overwhelming likelihood is that gridlock will prevail. The Bush administration would love to challenge the powerful trial lawyers' lobby and attempt to reduce the number of lawsuits by consumers against companies for product defects. A cluster of business groups already is plotting a campaign to promote tort reform in Congress. But don't expect that anything can actually happen on that issue with the Democrats so heavily represented in Congress. On the bureaucratic front, Bush would like to usher in an era nearly as deregulatory as Ronald Reagan's. But he won't be able to get through the Senate militantly anti-government regulators.
Defang the Environmental Protection Agency? Kill the Kyoto treaty on global warming? Open more national forests to road-building and logging? Permit more energy exploration on federal land, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? They're all on the Bush wish list, but they might all have to be put on hold due to partisan division. The people have spoken and they don't want much. And that is likely to be what they get. |
