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Introduction: An Agenda for the New Administration
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10490 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1993 |
731 Words |
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President-elect Bill Clinton faces a daunting list of domestic problems, from a weak economy and persistent unemployment to excessive federal spending and grossly inadequate health care for millions of Americans. Are there solutions to these serious problems that the nation can afford and the new president and a new congress can agree on?
At the same time, the United States continues to be the one nation that all others look to for global leadership, whether on trade agreements, the environment, or regional conflicts. Given its problems at home, what is America's global role in the post-Cold War era?
During the campaign, candidate Clinton spoke of jump starting the economy, reining in soaring federal programs, assuring access to health care for all, and ending the welfare system as a way of life. He also emphasized the need to make America more competitive in the global economy and to promote democracy around the world. Is implementation of so ambitious a program possible?
In this month's Special Report, six policy experts suggest a realistic, balanced agenda for the new administration.
At the heart of the Clinton plan for immediate economic growth, says economics journalist Anne Veigle, is a $60 billion federal program to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges, and highways. However, any new federal program confronts the strong antideficit stance taken by Ross Perot and the 19 million people who voted for him.
Saddled with a $300 billion-plus federal deficit and the huge $4 trillion national debt, the new president must tread carefully between doing too much and not enough, hoping that a new face in the White House will help produce a more confident consumer who will start spending and reignite the economy.
Economist Paul Craig Roberts asserts that the nation has been subjected to the most flagrant economic disinformation in 50 years, leading many Americans to think that we have a washed-up economy. In fact, U.S. manufacturing productivity tripled during the 1980s, and the country is pulling itself out of a recession.
What we do not need, argues Roberts, is a return to the government-interventionist policies of the 1970s that mired the U.S. economy in stagflation. Rather, we need to get on the dismantling of big government that began under President
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