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| Home Front: Economy |
| Kerry's Fairy Tales About Clintonomics |
| 2004-10-13 |
| by Allan H. Ryskind John Kerry says vote for him because he'll restore what Democrats talk about as Bill Clinton's "just-right, Goldilocks" economy. "Let's not forget what we [Democrats] did in the 1990s," he's been telling folks on the campaign trail and may well repeat in one of the next two debates. "And we can do it again." But the splendid '90s were not splendid because of the Democrats or Clinton or even Clinton's much ballyhooed Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now a Kerry adviser. It's a nice party myth, but it's far from accurate. Some recent history is in order: After Clinton's election, the President went full-bore left on the economy, pressing for the largest tax increase in history (the words of the late Sen. Moynihan), a special $72-billion energy tax and vastly increased domestic spending, including a federal takeover of the entire health-care system, equal to one-seventh of America's yearly domestic output. Before he could drop these economy crushers on the nation, the President was largely foiled by a feisty Republican minority in both houses of Congress. |
| Posted by:Anonymous5089 |
| #2 If Kerry wins watch for him to take credit for the Bush economy that's just starting up. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2004-10-13 5:23:51 PM |
| #1 Every sitting president either gets the blame or the credit for what the administration before theirs and sometimes the one before that did as far as the economy. The biggest thing Clinton did was just leave every thing pretty much alone as he had been slapped down by Congress earlier. But as rosy as some peole like to think the 90s were this is when the ball really started rolling as far jobs in both manufacturing and service started heading off shore. |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2004-10-13 4:54:06 PM |