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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jagfan who wrote (175427)	8/28/2001 4:58:50 PM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 769670

Thanks, that deserves to be posted in its entirety. Stop Blaming Bush for a Shrinking Surplus By Ben Stein Special to TheStreet.com 8/15/01 7:29 AM ET The federal budget surplus -- the amount by which revenue is expected to exceed spending -- is falling from where it was six months ago. This is occasioning some of the most outrageously nonsensical commentary I've ever seen. To point out just how ridiculous all of these alarums and excursions about the falling budget surplus are, and how they are just political hatchet work against President Bush, I offer a few facts and observations: 1. The budget surplus is falling largely because of an economic slowdown. This is part of the business cycle, a major phenomenon of this and all other free economies. As the economy slows, and especially as the stock market languishes, federal tax revenue falls. This isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. Every major conventional theory of how economies operate posits that the federal government should take away less money from people during hard times so that citizens have more to spend, thereby stimulating the economy. It is standard medicine for this and every other economy to trim the surplus (or enlarge the deficit) as the economy slows. The opposite -- trying to increase or maintain a surplus in bad economic times -- is exactly the medicine that led to the Great Depression. It takes a quack economic doctor, indeed, to prescribe such dangerous potions. Alas, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) is doing it every day, and it's a dismal sign of partisanship at the risk of economic disaster. Where the Money's Going 2. The surplus is falling because the tax cut is taking money from the government -- which often spends it well but often spends it ill -- and giving it back to the people who earned it. This tax cut came about because the president and Congress, in open session with a full national debate, agreed that taxpayers deserved some of their money back. Again, this isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. In a free society under law, we generally believe that the money people earn belongs to them. Daschle apparently believes all the money in the society belongs to the bureaucrats, who, if they're feeling generous, might just give a little of it back to the citizens. Bush, Congress and the voters have an idea more in keeping with the dignity of a free people who rule themselves: Once government has enough money to do its realistically necessary tasks and to allow for a reasonable but not frantic pace of debt retirement, the balance belongs to the citizens. This country's basic assumption is that the people can govern themselves, and they certainly can decide better than a bureaucrat how to spend their money. When we say the surplus is falling, there is an offsetting accounting item: The money in the hands of the moms, dads and grandparents of America is rising. That's not a bad thing. 3. The critics' hypocrisy about the size of the tax cut is almost funny. The network pundits repeatedly say that the tax cut is a trivial amount per family -- except for the very rich, and of course there aren't a lot of very rich. But if the tax cut is such a small deal, then why make such a tremendous fuss about the shrinking surplus? Either the surplus is falling a lot per taxpayer or it's not. Clearly, as a matter of arithmetic, the tax cut cannot be tiny from the taxpayers' standpoint and huge from the government's standpoint on a per capita basis. In truth, it's a small tax cut compared with the magnitude of the economy; it amounts to about 1% of the gross domestic product in 2001 and 2002. Let's not act as if it's Armageddon. Correcting Clinton's Mistakes 4. The federal budget is in flux on the spending side, but not because of some negligence by Bush or Vice President Cheney. The problem is that after the Clinton administration spent eight years building a surplus largely by neglecting the military, Bush is trying to build up defense forces again. That's going to take a lot of money. Former Vice President Gore, to his credit, announced that he would have spent some of the surplus on rearmament as well. It's misleading and almost wicked to try to make the Bush people into villains because they came to rescue America from serious military decay. If it takes more money, and if that lowers the surplus or puts us into a deficit, too bad. Defense is far more important than budget surpluses. Why blame Bush for trying to correct the defense mismanagement of Clinton and his crew? Improving defense is not cheap, but it merits praise, not criticism from the same Democrats who allowed it to run down for eight years. The Bush regime is not perfect, and no government ever was or will be. But its behavior is well within the ambit of sensible, well-proven governance that aims to enhance and protect the lives of a free people. If we're going to debate it, as we should, let's not resort to silly scare tactics and dangerous prescriptions that confuse instead of illuminate the issues. thestreet.com * * *