Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 5, 1993 TAG: 9305050294
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That was Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell responding to the Republican minority's successful filibuster of President Clinton's "economic-stimulus package."
Yet in 1989, Mitchell and his Democratic colleagues did their best to embarrass and defeat George Bush and cause his programs to fail. Mitchell promised to filibuster Bush's economic-stimulus plan, saying, "It's not really responsible to take a step which will guarantee a skyrocketing deficit in the future."
When the Clinton plan was presented, however, Mitchell had no problem supporting it, even though it would have sent the deficit into a higher orbit with new spending this year. The small decrease in subsequent years would not come by creating real jobs and growth in the private sector, but by increased taxes and a severe reduction in military spending.
People who were seduced by Clinton's charm and promises that he would be a different Democrat, who believed he cared about the middle class, who agreed with what he said about government - that it could not and should not be so involved in people's lives - are starting to awaken to the awful truth that they have been taken by a man with the skill of a snake-oil salesman.
In its first 100 days, the Clinton presidency has offered evidence that it may have perpetrated one of the greatest frauds in political history.
In March 1992, Sen. Mitchell, echoing much of what candidate Clinton was promising on the stump, said: "The middle class in America has been socked too long and too hard . . . . Our bill gives a tax break to middle-income Americans . . . . We Democrats want to cut taxes on the middle class . . . [our plan] will reduce the deficit, unlike the president's plan, Then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen spoke of a Democratic tax-relief plan that would offer aid and comfort to "a median-income family of four making $35,000 a year." Apparently such families are now considered "rich" by President Clinton, who seems to think they have not been paying their "fair share." These "rich" people, according to House Speaker Tom Foley, must pay more taxes to "participate more constructively in sharing the burdens of government."
Democrats just don't get it. Government is the burden on too many of us, and under Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton it's getting heavier.
Candidate Clinton repeatedly promised not to raise taxes on the middle class and then feigned shock when he "learned" from the Congressional Budget Office, the same source for his economic information during the campaign, that the deficit was bigger than he had thought.
Still, he promised during the debate in East Lansing, Mich., "I'm not going to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for the programs I've recommended." He said if the money wasn't available, he would cut the programs.
Instead, President Clinton wants to raise taxes on those making as little as $20,000 annually. The Clinton energy tax alone is estimated by Carter energy secretary James Schlesinger to cost a family nearly $500 per year.
The president also wants to raise from 50 percent to 85 percent the amount of Social Security benefits subject to taxation, so that seniors earning as little as $25,000 a year in outside income would see a 70 percent increase in the income taxes paid on their benefits.
"I reject brain-dead politics . . . and the old Democratic orthodoxy that there is a program for every problem and that we can tax and spend our way to prosperity," candidate Clinton told the Detroit Economic Club last Aug. 27.
But that is now what the president proposes. His Feb. 17 plan requested increased spending on more than 100 new or existing federal programs, while his proposed domestic spending totals $196.3 billion over five years, not counting Hillary Rodham Clinton's soon-to-be-birthed 900-pound-gorilla health-care package, estimated to add from $30 billion to $90 billion annually in new spending.
In October 1989, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen opposed the Bush administration's proposed cut in the capital-gains tax to stimulate investment and create more jobs. Bentsen said it would increase the deficit and that was a bad thing. He called it "bad economic policy, bad savings policy, bad tax policy and bad fiscal policy."
That's a most appropriate indictment for the fiscal policies of the administration of which Treasury Secretary Bentsen is now a part. Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB