Will Obama be a failure if:

[Big RR]

Generaly I would agree with you, but it would depend on his opponent. I can't think of any repubs I'd vote for over him, but I wouldn't rule it out completely--going back in time maybe Mark (?) Goodell or John Lindsey--maybe there are some like that left in the party.

Hell, fWIW, I can't think of many dems I'd vote for over him, at least those likely to run.

[Sue U]

Depending on what they committed to in their platform, I could possibly vote for Olympia Snowe or perhaps Susan Collins were either to run. But neither could win a Republican nomination because they couldn't pass the teabag test. Problem is, while the President theoretically sets a policy agenda, I really don't want a GOP Congress; the crazy is running way too strong in the party these days.

ETA:

Let me say that "possibly" and "perhaps" voting for any Republican assumes some sort of catastrophic realignment of the Democratic Party; when I vote Democrat I do so primarily to thwart the Republicans. In contests where my vote is less likely to matter usually I vote Green or Socialist, in some significant part to stick it to the Democrats.

[dgs49]

Sue's mini-diatribe is positively amazing. The mind-numbing blindness to reality is almost beyond response, as it is simply a cornucopia of utter, preposterous falsehoods.

"Squandered a budget surplus"? Is it even possible to suppose that the Dems would have restrained spending to maintain a balanced budget? The same party that, even now (did you see the SOTU?) proposes hundreds of billions more in stupid, utterly wasteful new spending?

"looted the treasury to transfer national wealth to corporate interests"? On which planet, exactly do you reside? Define "national wealth." Money that could have been confiscated as taxes? Seriously, define it in such a way that makes your sentence in any way cogent. It is not possible. Define "corporate interests." Or is it just two multi-syllable words that make your nipples hard?

"dismantled pollution controls and environmental regulation." Oh my yes, there is a HUGE problem with environmental regulations be rolled back and/or not enforced. The CFR is nothing but a PAMPHLET, and getting smaller all the time, isn't it? What planet did you say this was on?

"gutted food and drug safety review, inspection and enforcement." Riiiiiiiiiight.

"promoted economic policies that dramatically widened the income gap between rich and poor." Where did this nonsense originate? What is the problem with a "widening gap" between the wealthiest and poorest people in a society? Karl Marx? Those who have an economic understanding that goes beyond a neighborhood lemonade stand know that the economy of a nation is not a "zero-sum" proposition. Just because one person has a lot of wealth does not mean that someone else must have less. And even if that were the case, the crux of the matter would not be who has what, but rather do the "players" reap what they sow? In our society, people who produce nothing (other than Gub'mint workers) generally end up with nothing. Why is this a problem?

"and enacted tax policy to ensure the rich paid less." "The Rich" pay an ever increasing percentage of the total of all collected income taxes. It is actually funny that the pinhead liberals in this country keep crying for their politicians to MAKE THE RICH PAY MORE in taxes (jealousy is a serious motivator), but even the socialists they elect are not so stupid to raise the income tax rates to the high levels we saw in the past because they can see clearly that it is counterproductive - Gubmint revenues go down and the overall economy (The "People") suffer.

"The Supreme Court we currently have is dominated by the most radical far-right ideologues..." You mean, People who actually read the constitution and care about what it says?

"the Republicans dragged us into two overseas wars -- one of which was entirely unnecessary, the other entirely mismanaged..." Hello? Hello? Are you aware that funding for both of these wars has been supported by a majority of YOUR party's representatives since the word, Go? Are you aware that you recently elected the most Left Wing politician in the history of the Presidency, and he is FOLLOWING EXACTLY THE SAME POLICIES AS HIS PREDECESSOR?

I didn't think so.

Don't trouble yourself with reality - it's such a bore.

[Sue U]

Hey Dave, don't let the actual facts get in the way of your blathering:

Sue's mini-diatribe is positively amazing. The mind-numbing blindness to reality is almost beyond response, as it is simply a cornucopia of utter, preposterous falsehoods.

"Squandered a budget surplus"? Is it even possible to suppose that the Dems would have restrained spending to maintain a balanced budget? The same party that, even now (did you see the SOTU?) proposes hundreds of billions more in stupid, utterly wasteful new spending?

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/d ... deral.html

"looted the treasury to transfer national wealth to corporate interests"? On which planet, exactly do you reside? Define "national wealth." Money that could have been confiscated as taxes? Seriously, define it in such a way that makes your sentence in any way cogent. It is not possible. Define "corporate interests." Or is it just two multi-syllable words that make your nipples hard?

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-rel ... 0-billion/
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/ns09142005a.cfm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/ ... 8216.shtml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11995762/ns ... road_back/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00049.html

"dismantled pollution controls and environmental regulation." Oh my yes, there is a HUGE problem with environmental regulations be rolled back and/or not enforced. The CFR is nothing but a PAMPHLET, and getting smaller all the time, isn't it? What planet did you say this was on?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01759.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008 ... 24-10.html
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... tal_record

"gutted food and drug safety review, inspection and enforcement." Riiiiiiiiiight.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/ ... 8201.shtml
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/7 ... and-w-bush
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/02/01/6 ... h-fda.html
http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2007 ... -products/

That's enough for now; everyone gets the idea, but it's late and "refudiating" your ill-considered and wholly unsupported rantings is getting old. Maybe I'll make a fool of you some more tomorrow, but my mama always said it isn't nice to make fun of the ignorant.

[Sue U]

Mama may have been right, but I am weak:

"promoted economic policies that dramatically widened the income gap between rich and poor." Where did this nonsense originate? What is the problem with a "widening gap" between the wealthiest and poorest people in a society? Karl Marx? Those who have an economic understanding that goes beyond a neighborhood lemonade stand know that the economy of a nation is not a "zero-sum" proposition. Just because one person has a lot of wealth does not mean that someone else must have less. And even if that were the case, the crux of the matter would not be who has what, but rather do the "players" reap what they sow? In our society, people who produce nothing (other than Gub'mint workers) generally end up with nothing. Why is this a problem?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/busin ... 75504.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-chart ... ca-2010-4#
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/sep/28 ... -and-poor/

And if you don't understand why this is a problem, ask that noted Marxist Alan Greenspan:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/n ... 382745.stm

"and enacted tax policy to ensure the rich paid less." "The Rich" pay an ever increasing percentage of the total of all collected income taxes. It is actually funny that the pinhead liberals in this country keep crying for their politicians to MAKE THE RICH PAY MORE in taxes (jealousy is a serious motivator), but even the socialists they elect are not so stupid to raise the income tax rates to the high levels we saw in the past because they can see clearly that it is counterproductive - Gubmint revenues go down and the overall economy (The "People") suffer.

The rich pay "an ever-increasing percentage" because --DUH! -- their individual incomes are larger and account for an ever-increasing share of all income generated (see "widening income gap.") "Jealousy" is only your fantasy "motivator" for increasing taxes on the wealthy (which by most measures would include me); personally, I have no problem with paying more, because I reap proportionately more benefits. The U.S. is currently at historically low rates of taxation across all incomes, but especially the top marginal rates.

The Supreme Court we currently have is dominated by the most radical far-right ideologues..." You mean, People who actually read the constitution and care about what it says?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/us/25 ... wanted=all

Yeah, obviously Andrew D, Big RR, bigskygal, and myself -- folks who actually studied the Constitution and constitutional jurisprudence and whose daily work actually invloves those issues on a regular basis -- care not a fig for what the document says. Only the far-right of the political spectrum has any regard for the Constitution, and only they can interpret and apply its principles. You continue to prove yourself an ass with statements like this.

"the Republicans dragged us into two overseas wars -- one of which was entirely unnecessary, the other entirely mismanaged..." Hello? Hello? Are you aware that funding for both of these wars has been supported by a majority of YOUR party's representatives since the word, Go? Are you aware that you recently elected the most Left Wing politician in the history of the Presidency, and he is FOLLOWING EXACTLY THE SAME POLICIES AS HIS PREDECESSOR?

As I said earlier, I consider Obama a failure in part because of these policies. (BTW, the Democrats are not "my" party of choice, and to call Obama "the most Left Wing politician in the history of the Presidency" is laughable; by some measures, even Richard Nixon was more of a liberal/leftist.)

Don't trouble yourself with reality - it's such a bore.

You are delusional.

[Econoline]

(from http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/338)

[rubato]

Hey Dave, don't let the actual facts get in the way of your blathering:
... "

I have never seen any effect of the facts on his opinions. I think he exists here as a reminder to liberals how thoroughly happy repuglicans/conservatives are in their own ignorance and how completely resistant they can be to the truth.

But it is nice for the rest of us to see that you care enough to dig out links to the facts. There is a real lightening of the heart. Thanks!

The nice thing about democracy is that there is a built-in allowance for a large percentage of mean and ignorant fuckers casting votes.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

link deleted for brevity

A most excellent point.

Unless we are going to posit some very unusual theory of evolution ... and justice.

yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

Obama is already a "failure" as a president, since my own political priorities have not been advanced by his administration. However, that doesn't mean I'd want the Republicans anywhere near the levers of power.

What the Republicans do that troubles you so much?

Let's see, domestically, they squandered a budget surplus;.

Sue, this guys says there never was a surplus and he seems to have some support. So what is the truth? The truth is not what you want it to be, it is what is.


http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus October 31st, 2007


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------







QUICK OBSERVATIONS



More observations...


The government can have a surplus even if it has trillions in debt, but it cannot have a surplus if that debt increased every year. This article is about surplus/deficit, not the debt. However, it analyzes the debt to prove there wasn't a surplus under Clinton.

For those that want a more detailed explanation of why a claimed $236 billion surplus resulted in the national debt increasing by $18 billion, please read this follow-up article.



Time and time again, anyone reading the mainstream news or reading articles on the Internet will read the claim that President Clinton not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus. This is then used as an argument to further highlight the fiscal irresponsibility of the federal government under the Bush administration.

The claim is generally made that Clinton had a surplus of $69 billion in FY1998, $123 billion in FY1999 and $230 billion in FY2000 . In that same link, Clinton claimed that the national debt had been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years, presumably FY1998, FY1999, and FY2000--though, interestingly, $360 billion is not the sum of the alleged surpluses of the three years in question ($69B + $123B + $230B = $422B, not $360B).

While not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, it's curious to see Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus. It never happened. There was never a surplus and the facts support that position. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion.

Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury (see note about this link below) website where the national debt is updated daily and a history of the debt since January 1993 can be obtained. Considering the government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and considering Clinton's budget proposal in 1993 took effect in October 1993 and concluded September 1994 (FY1994), here's the national debt at the end of each year of Clinton Budgets:


Fiscal
Year Year
Ending National Debt Deficit
FY1993 09/30/1993 $4.411488 trillion
FY1994 09/30/1994 $4.692749 trillion $281.26 billion
FY1995 09/29/1995 $4.973982 trillion $281.23 billion
FY1996 09/30/1996 $5.224810 trillion $250.83 billion
FY1997 09/30/1997 $5.413146 trillion $188.34 billion
FY1998 09/30/1998 $5.526193 trillion $113.05 billion
FY1999 09/30/1999 $5.656270 trillion $130.08 billion
FY2000 09/29/2000 $5.674178 trillion $17.91 billion
FY2001 09/28/2001 $5.807463 trillion $133.29 billion



As can clearly be seen, in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit. Yes, the deficit was almost eliminated in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive surplus number. And Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion deficit. The growing deficits started in the year of the last Clinton budget, not in the first year of the Bush administration.

Keep in mind that President Bush took office in January 2001 and his first budget took effect October 1, 2001 for the year ending September 30, 2002 (FY2002). So the $133.29 billion deficit in the year ending September 2001 was Clinton's. Granted, Bush supported a tax refund where taxpayers received checks in 2001. However, the total amount refunded to taxpayers was only $38 billion . So even if we assume that $38 billion of the FY2001 deficit was due to Bush's tax refunds which were not part of Clinton's last budget, that still means that Clinton's last budget produced a deficit of 133.29 - 38 = $95.29 billion.

Clinton clearly did not achieve a surplus and he didn't leave President Bush with a surplus.

So why do they say he had a surplus?

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus October 31st, 2007


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Sue U]

Sue, this guys says there never was a surplus and he seems to have some support. So what is the truth? The truth is not what you want it to be, it is what is.

Um, I'd be inclined to believe the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Annenberg Center's Factcheck (linked previously) rather than some unemployed software developer with a web page and a "common sense American conservative" agenda. We have experts for a reason. But you go ahead and believe what you want.

[rubato]

Liberty;

Finding one crackpot website which is contradicted by a reliable source is not persuasive. I can find crackpots who assert that cell phones cause cancer, homeopathy is effective, alien abduction is real &c.

This is a link to the Congressional Budget Office historical budget data:

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf

year ………. Debt Held by the public (billions)
1997 ………. 3772
1998 ………. 3721 <-- decrease
1999 ………. 3632 <-- decrease
2000 ………. 3409 <-- decrease
2001 ………. 3319 <-- decrease (final Clinton Budget but Bush threw away part of the surplus in a tax cut)
2002 ………. 3540 <-- Bush with Republicans running everything increases deficit
2003 ………. 3913 <-- Bush with Republicans running everything increases deficit
2004 ………. 4295 <-- Bush with Republicans running everything increases deficit
2005 ………. 4592 <-- Bush with Republicans running everything increases deficit and so forth.

Republicans nearly always expand government and increase the deficit.



yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

You can see it represented graphically here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... USDebt.png


Notice how the debt explodes under Reagan-Bush I and then again under Bush II and goes down under Clinton.


yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

Sue, this guys says there never was a surplus and he seems to have some support. So what is the truth? The truth is not what you want it to be, it is what is.

Um, I'd be inclined to believe the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Annenberg Center's Factcheck (linked previously) rather than some unemployed software developer with a web page and a "common sense American conservative" agenda. We have experts for a reason. But you go ahead and believe what you want.

It is not a matter of what I want to believe it is a matter of what the truth is. This reminds me of how my enemy the Communist viewed the truth. To them the truth was whatever promoted the revolution. That left me cynical. I don’t believe it just because someone said it and it does not matter who said it.

Assuming he is telling the truth, he does make good point doesn’t he: How can one have a surplus when the debt rose every year?

[Sue U]

"National debt" and "budget deficit/surplus" are two different things. When someone conflates the two, it demonstrates that he doesn't know what he's talking about. And as rubato's linked graph shows, the debt did in fact take a downward turn under Clinton, both in absolute dollars and as a fraction of GDP. As the CBO and Annenberg Center confirm, the Clinton administration generated a budget surplus.

[rubato]

Sue, this guys says there never was a surplus and he seems to have some support. So what is the truth? The truth is not what you want it to be, it is what is.

Um, I'd be inclined to believe the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Annenberg Center's Factcheck (linked previously) rather than some unemployed software developer with a web page and a "common sense American conservative" agenda. We have experts for a reason. But you go ahead and believe what you want.

It is not a matter of what I want to believe it is a matter of what the truth is. This reminds me of how my enemy the Communist viewed the truth. To them the truth was whatever promoted the revolution. That left me cynical. I don’t believe it just because someone said it and it does not matter who said it.

Assuming he is telling the truth, he does make good point doesn’t he: How can one have a surplus when the debt rose every year?

Which proves only that if we lie about what the facts are we can support any conclusion you like. No one, starting from assertions proved to be untrue, is making a good point. He is lying to people who would rather distort the facts than admit that the truth contradicts their pet theories. There are a lot of such people. You find crackpots and superstitious people everywhere. You don't have to listen to them.

Accurate information about the budget and the deficit is avail. from many sources online. The Congressional Budget Office is the most central but there are many others. Wikipedias postings on areas of broad interest like this are well-vetted.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

The Patsy Schroeder School of Debate

Those of you reading this thread have noted that the earth-person who calls himself “Sue U” posted a virtual avalanche of links (it would appear) to rebut disagreements I voiced with her prior posting. Her assumption was, I presume, that neither I nor anyone else would have or take the time to actually read the links. I was reminded of the short-lived presidential campaign of Representative Patricia Schoeder, whose most notable debate tactic was to make 27 different, run-together points in response to an opponent’s single point, knowing that there would never be sufficient time to rebut everything she said, most of which was pure garbage.

For better or for worse I have a bit of time this morning, so I took some of it to read some of Sue U’s links.

To my point that Democrats can’t legitimately claim that Bush squandered the “Clinton Surpluses” because they would have been spending even more than the Republicans who were then in the majority in Congress, she posted a link that explained the origin of the so-called “Clinton surpluses,” which was interesting – Clinton raised taxes (as we all recall) and benefitted from the “Dot Com Boom” (which he had nothing to do with), and the link had nothing to do with my point.

Sue U claimed that Republicans had, “looted the treasury to transfer national wealth to corporate interests.” My response was, basically, bullshit. She links an article that claims (and I don’t doubt it) that Medicare Part D would cost less (to the government) if the government were able to negotiate drug prices directly with the drug companies, rather than reimbursing drug costs that had been paid by insurers. And Medicare would cost less if the government were able to build hospitals, hire Pakistani doctors and Phillipino nurses to work in them, and force people to go to the government hospitals. (As Sue U would undoubtedly claim is authorized under the “interstate commerce” clause of the Constitution).

Apparently, any time the Government purchases something from a private company, they are “transferring national wealth to corporate interests,” corporate interests being otherwise known as the employees who work for the private companies and their shareholders. Presumably the same thing applies when the Government purchases major weapons systems, bridges (erected by private corporations), or toilet paper. This is definitely a phenomenon worthy of our urgent corrective action.

She links another article whining about “no-bid” contracts to companies with “Republican ties” in the wake of Katrina, and waiver of Davis Bacon requirements for some subsequent procurements. How Ironic. Is it even necessary to say how stupid it is to, on the one hand, complain that the Feds reacted too slowly to get things done after the hurricane, and on the other hand to whine about “no-bid” contracts? Unbelievable. Moreover, these contracts were uniformly COST REIMBURSABLE contracts, subject to audit, and awarded only to the few companies who (a) were capable of mobilizing quickly, (b) were large enough to do significant work, and (c) had accounting systems that were rigorous enough to permit cost-reimbursable contracting. Point two: All successful companies have Republican ties. Point three: It was NOT POSSIBLE to prepare the tender documents that would have been required for competitive bidding.

And what can one say about Davis Bacon, except that it has been one of the biggest give-aways to union labor of the past 70 years, resulting in waste of hundreds of billions of dollars and categorically eliminating the most efficient contractors who might otherwise have bid successfully on Federally-funded construction work? A purely Democrat initiative, founded in racism.

A third link breathlessly reported that “Halliburton” “may have charged” DoD $61 million too much for fuels used in Iraq. But then when you read the article you learn that there actually was no wrongdoing by Halliburton; it was required by government specifications to use a certain Kuwaiti petrol supplier which was actually responsible for the overcharge, and Halliburton’s piece of it (markup) was minimal (and they didn’t do anything wrong, in any event). I’m SHOCKED!

Sue U claimed that the Bush Administration dismantled pollution controls and environmental regulation, to which I also took exception.

She links an article that bemoans a large reduction in the number of civil cased filed by the EPA under Bush43’s administration. Hmm. Seems serious. But later in the article it is casually mentioned that the Bush Administration focused not on the number of cases but rather the biggest polluters. “In the past three fiscal years the EPA has cut between 890 million and 1.1 Billion pounds of air pollution…three of the four highest years in the agency’s history…the agency has won conviction against 95% of the people indicted…”

So rather than dismantling pollution controls, they merely made a policy change that actually achieved better results than the previous (Democrat) policy. Assuming the real objective is to reduce pollution.

Her other links on this topic cite: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club,…what more needs to be said? The complaints are things like leasing public land for development, “failing” to curb CO2 emissions (yawn), taking grizzly bears off the endangered species list (another Democrat idiocy) and other similar atrocities. God save us from Pinko’s wearing guns.

To support her statement that the Bush Administration “gutted food and drug safety review,” she links an article that basically says that after 9/11, the level of attention given to food inspection skyrocketed (BTW, who was President at that time? Al Gore?), and it has subsequently dropped back to where it was before. Not surprising at all. Here is the meat of it: “The Bush administration's budget request for 2008 includes an additional $10.6 million for food safety at the FDA; THE LOBBYING GROUP SAID 10 TIMES THAT INCREASE IS NEEDED. Even though the FDA increased its overall spending on food between 2003 and 2006, those increases failed to keep pace with rising personnel costs.”

Is this anything more than an advocacy group that wants to maximize the number of government employees? Is there any indication whatsoever that Americans’ food was any less safe during the Bush43 years? Hardly.

It is amazing how different the world looks when you are wearing pink-tinted glasses.

[liberty]

The Patsy Schroeder School of Debate


And Medicare would cost less if the government were able to build hospitals, hire Pakistani doctors and Phillipino nurses to work in them

What would be wrong with that?

[rubato]

"...
To my point that Democrats can’t legitimately claim that Bush squandered the “Clinton Surpluses” because they would have been spending even more than the Republicans who were then in the majority in Congress, she posted a link that explained the origin of the so-called “Clinton surpluses,” which was interesting – Clinton raised taxes (as we all recall) and benefitted from the “Dot Com Boom” (which he had nothing to do with), and the link had nothing to do with my point. ... "

Clinton erased the deficit by three things: First, he held discretionary spending flat for his first 4 budgets (the first two Democratic the next two Republican, who merely imitated the Democrats). Discretionary spending went up by about 25B/yr for his last four budgets which were all Republican. Second he raised taxes on the top 20% of incomes. Third he cut taxes on the bottom 40% of incomes.


http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf

year ……… discretionary spending (billions)
1989 …… 488.8 last Reagan budget
1990 …… 500.6
1991 …… 533.3
1992 …… 533.8
1993 …… 539.4 last Bush I total increase = 50 Billion. 12.65B/yr (democratic congress)
1994 …… 541.4 first Clinton
1995 …… 544.9
1996 …… 532.7
1997 …… 547.2 end Clinton 1st term, total = 7.8 Billion. 1.95B/yr(democratic/ republican congress)
1998 …… 552.1
1999 …… 572.0
2000 …… 614.8
2001 …… 649.3 last Clinton 2nd term, total = 102.1 Billion, 25.53B/yr (all republican congress)
2002 …… 734.4
2003*…… 825.7 < 1st 2 years of Bush II = 176.4 Billion, 88.2 B/yr (all republican congress)
2004 ……. 895.5
2005 ……. 968.5
2006 …… 1016.0 < 1st 5 years of Bush II = 366.7 Billion, 73.34 B/yr (all republican congress)


BushCo spent 8 years proving that fucking the bottom 80% to favor (mostly) the top 5% is a bad strategy. Were you paying attention?

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

As an aside it is worth mentioning that the Democratically controlled congress CUT Bush the firsts budget requests in both of his last two budgets by a very large amount.

But for a fuller explanation for the 90s economic boom this is interesting:



______________________
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TotW/clinton.html

Clinton

How Much Credit Does Clinton Deserve for the Economy?

J. Bradford DeLong
delong@econ.berkeley.edu
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/

The performance of the American economy in the 1990s has been amazingly good. There are rotten spots--continued stagnation in the wages paid for blue-collar and lower-skill white-collar jobs, growth in the number of the very poor, a large trade deficit that might become a problem in the future (but is not a problem now), and a stock market that is looking for a crash if continued good news does not validate giddily optimistic expectations. But overall the American economy in the 1990s has vastly outperformed everyone's expectations.

Does Bill Clinton deserve credit for this? Politicians are notorious for grabbing credit where they don't deserve it. Remember Michael Dukakis in 1988 taking credit for the then-boom in Massachusetts, even though the sources of boom long predated his arrival in the governor's chair. Remember Ronald Reagan at the end of 1984 taking credit for fast growth in the previous two years, even though the principal cause of rapid growth in 1983 and 1984 was the depth of the recession of 1982 that had been generated by the Federal Reserve's decision back in 1979 to fight inflation first no matter what the cost in shut-down plants or unemployed workers.

If you go ask Clinton (or, rather, his press secretary) you will be told three things: that Bill Clinton restored responsibility and put the underclass back on the road to inclusion in America with welfare reform, that he created jobs and expanded opportunities for Americans to export through NAFTA and GATT, and that he removed the dead weight of the deficit that had hobbled American economic growth. So let's look at each of these three.

Welfare reform is surely the oddest issue for Bill Clinton to try to take credit. It is true that since January 1994 the number of people in families receiving welfare--then called AFDC, now called TANF--has declined from 14.3 to 6 million. And the poverty rate which was above 15 percent in 1992 is now down below 12.7 percent. But extreme poverty is up: more people today live in families with incomes less than half the poverty line. And people who leave welfare do not move to stable work: in the eight months after leaving TANF, one in seven potential workers was not employed at all, and only one in three held a single job for all eight months. Off of welfare, yes. Into work, sort of.

Why the mixed picture on welfare reform? It was launched under the most favorable circumstances possible: the lowest unemployment rate and the fastest productivity growth in a generation. The principal reason is clear: not enough resources.

Back at the very start of 1993 then-Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services David Ellwood warned Bill Clinton that welfare reform would be expensive: it was cheaper to pay single women with dependent children cash than it would be to equip them with the skills they would need to keep jobs, give them the help they would need to find jobs, and enable them to afford the day care they would need while they were at their jobs. Yet the welfare reform bill that Clinton signed in 1996 did not recognize this: it was an attempt to do welfare reform on the cheap. And because it was done on the cheap, it is best seen as an attempt to hand a political hot potato to someone else: "Here's the money the federal government has been spending on welfare," the 1996 bill said to the states, "now you figure out a way to spend this same amount of money and accomplish all these extra objectives."

Moreover, it seems likely that in the next decade we will try to do welfare reform even cheaper. At the moment the federal government has no effective role in TANF other than to hand money over to the states. Governors are happy to take credit for any good done with the federal money. Governors like to run against Senators and take their jobs away from them. Senators then ask themselves, "Why am I so eager to build the reputation of my future challengers? If this program were cut back, I could be getting credit for a tax cut." Programs which the federal government funds but does not control have always had short lifespan. It is a good bet that federal funding for TANF will be lower in a decade than it is now. And it is an open question whether--and which--states will take up the slack.

Thus on welfare reform Bill Clinton is in the worst of both worlds. Since the actual design and operation of the welfare reform programs takes place at the state level, it is the activist governors--mostly Republicans--of the leading states who will deserve the credit if in a decade we look back and conclude that welfare reform was a success. Since it was Bill Clinton who raised the issue and launched us down this road without committing adequate resources, it is he who will deserve the blame if in a decade we look back and conclude that welfare reform was a failure.

On international trade Bill Clinton deserves somewhat more credit. He did not have to spend scarce early political capital on rallying support for George H.W. Bush's NAFTA and for the Uruguay Round of the GATT. He did do so because he thought that these two trade agreements were good for America and for the world. Since the end of 1994, however, free trade has not been a high priority: little effort to win fast-track negotiating authority for a free-trade agreement with Chile (a country which we owe bigtime: it was our CIA that conspired to assassinate their General Schneider because he believed in Chile's constitution, thus setting the stage for General Pinochet who liked to herd people into soccer stadiums to shoot them and to plant car bombs in Washington's Sheridan Circle); insufficient preparatory work to launch a new round of trade negotiations at Seattle; and an overall unwillingness to be a pioneer on trade issues.

As WTO head Michael Moore puts it, the world will move toward freer trade only if industrial core demands for freer investment and higher payments for intellectual property are balanced by two sets of industrial core concessions. First, allow developing countries to export more agricultural products, more textiles, and more of other relatively low-tech manufactured goods like basic steel. Second, reassure developing countries that concern over labor and environmental standards will not be allowed to degenerate into yet another excuse for shutting out their products. Bill Clinton has not been a pioneer on these issues.

Clinton might respond that you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs. But if you're not a pioneer, you don't claim credit for leadership.

Last--but most important--comes the deficit and the rate of economic growth. It had long been clear that whatever supply-side gains in productivity were produced by the Reagan tax cut were vastly outweighed by the negative consequences of high deficits that drained the pool of capital for financing investment and slowed economic growth. Depending on which set of economists you asked, the four percent of GDP or so that was diverted to buying government bonds to finance the deficit slowed American growth by between one-half and one percent per year. It had left America by 1992 between 4 and 8 percent poorer than it might have been had the budget been balanced.

Outside economists and economic advisors had been making these points for a decade before Bill Clinton took office. The argument that the economic health of the nation required spending political capital on deficit reduction was made in 1993 by Bob Rubin, Lloyd Bentsen, Laura Tyson, Lawrence Summers, and company. But it had been made back in 1983 by Martin Feldstein, David Stockman, and company. And it had been made in 1989 by Richard Darman, Michael Boskin, and company. Thus there is a good deal of truth in the claim that Clinton's fiscal policy was not a Democratic fiscal policy--indeed, Clinton at one point called it an "Eisenhower Republican" policy.

But there was an important difference between Bill Clinton and his predecessors. The difference lies not in the advice that he was given, but in the fact that he had the brains to understand it and the guts to follow through. The historical reputations of his predecessors will suffer from it. In retrospect the Reagan 1980s look like a period in which a strong business-cycle recovery from a deep recession was followed by half a decade of slow productivity growth as the deficit hobbled investment. In retrospect the Bush administration looks simply confused as different factions fight over the wheel: the read-my-lips faction of the beginning then replaced by the 1990-tax-increase faction, which was then repudiated by the Bush dynasty.

It is here that Clinton deserves full credit. Lifting the dead weight of the deficit from the economy cost him essentially all his political capital in 1993. And the rewards in terms of faster economic growth have been greater than anyone in 1993 would have dared predict. If unchecked, the deficit would have deprived the economy of $300 billion a year in total investment and $150 billion a year in high-tech investment. Economists will argue for decades to come over how much of the high-tech high productivity-growth boom we are currently experiencing is the result of the high-investment economy produced by the elimination of the deficit. It is a welcome change from the previous sport that academic economists played, that of assigning blame for relative stagnation.

The record all in all? A score of one and a half out of three. That's not a very impressive score, unless you recognize that the third is the most important. Trade is not all that important (yet) to the large and not very open American economy. Rapid economic growth opens up worlds of opportunity for the private sector and new worlds of possibility for the public sector. A richer America will be able to afford to do more, and will feel itelf able to afford to do more.


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yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

What bothers me is that you all appear to be willing to support Obama no matter what he doses as long as it falls on the left side of the political spectrum. If Obama decided to interned, not that he could do it at this point in our history*, the right wing talk radio establishment, I feel that you all would support him. As you all see it that would be ok as long as it were conservatives being locked up. There are people here that where willing to damage the Constitution in order to impeach bush for something that was not a crime when the liberal, democrat controlled senate of the 1990s was not willing to try Clinton for actual crimes. That is the kind of attitude the produces men like Hitler and Stalin.

*Internment can be justified if the survival of the nation depends on it.