For the first time in 25 years, Congress is more friendly to the American taxpayer than is the president. Consider the realities:
Congress wants to spend billions of dollars more for new social programs. The Clinton administration seeks even more, promoting a government "stimulus" package that exacerbates a system of government dependence and is premised upon the Keynesian notion that government spending promotes job creation.
Congress wants to raise taxes on the middle class and the "rich." But the Clinton administration wants even more, endorsing--in the span of just one year--a BTU tax, higher marginal income taxes, a massive 10 percent surtax on the rich, higher gas taxes, a value-added tax (VAT), higher tobacco taxes, higher taxes on Social Security benefits, higher corporate taxes, increases in estate taxes, a flood of new user fees, taxes on pensions, and possibly a gun tax.
Congress demands stiffer regulations against companies to "protect" consumers, workers, and the environment. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and Hillary Rodham Clinton go even further, demanding harsh price caps and draconian regulations against private health-care companies that dare to profit by charging market prices for drugs and health services.
Slower growth
Clintonomics is a throwback to the 1960s' drift toward statism. The macroeconomic consequences of Clinton's policies will be: hostility to free markets and profits, fewer small business start-ups, establishment of a government/big business industrial policy "partnership," and slower economic growth relative to the rest of the world.
But perhaps just as devastating will be the effects on the consumer: insecurity, slower income growth, less freedom, and fewer jobs.
Clintonomics is nothing new. Just look back at the last four years. Clintonomics is a more severe version of George Bush's Darmanomics (so named after President Bush's budget director, Richard Darman), which was characterized by higher spending and taxes, and stiffer regulations.
Contrary to the establishment press, Darmanomics did not represent a continuation of the Reagan era. In fact, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has observed, Darmanomics "is Reaganomics in reverse."
A recent study by the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation (ATRF) adds teeth to his observation. According to ATRF's study, the cost of government jumped dramatically during the Bush years, from 48 percent of total national income in 1989 to 53 percent in 1993.
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