Supposedly conservative, fiscally responsible Republicans took over Congress back when Bill Clinton was still occupying the White House, and what has happened since has been the most spectacular eruption of spending in the history of the United States, an economy-imperiling burst of billions, a kaboom that could ultimately give us a crisis.
So what you do in a democracy is change things, which is to say, vote in the Democrats this November, not just in the House, but in the Senate, too, and … but wait, what’s that we’re hearing on the campaign trail? Talk of an “American Dream Initiative,” a plan by Democrats to solve our problems by — oh, no. We are out of luck. The Democrats plan to fix things not by clamping down on spending, but by doing more of it.
It’s true. Going in to the fall campaign — and looking ahead to the presidential election two years from now — prominent Democrats led by Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York have adopted a Democratic Leadership Council agenda that entails grants for state universities, tax credits for college tuition, gratis savings bonds for each child born in the country each year and a matching bond 10 years later, and more, much more.
That savings-bond idea especially sticks in the craw because it comes from a party that refuses to take on the biggest domestic issue the federal government faces — the impact of retiring baby boomers on Social Security and Medicare — and that turned its demagogic back on the idea of individual retirement accounts within Social Security. So instead, the party is going to dish out free money — well, not exactly free; other citizens will payfor it — on top of other programs as a sort of irrational exuberance that further encumbers the economy while solving nothing.
Maybe that cutesy trick will buy a vote or two, and if it doesn’t, well there is this idea of tax credits to aid the families of students in paying for tuition.
What the money will actually do, of course, is feed the inflationary frenzy of the nation’s colleges and universities. It will also be giving “tax breaks” to what the Democrats like to call “the rich”— one of the tunes the Democrats are forever humming in their political contests with the GOP. The party is right, of course, that the future of the country depends dramatically on the future of education, but this particular policy can’t help but remind you of “The Wizard of Oz” conferring brains on the Scarecrow by handing him a diploma. The real, pressing policy need in education is to improve the performance of public schools.
How to pay for all this? Make the government more efficient, say the Democrats, and that’s fine, except that government is inherently inefficient, and as important as efficiency drives may be, they never come up with the multibillions you hope for. The Democrats also want to end corporate welfare, which is fine and good to the extent that the programs really are welfare — and to the extent that you can get congressional members of either party to go along.
But even if you can get the savings, the point is not to build right back up to where you were, or even close. The economy and the welfare of the people depend on having more money being put to productive use in private enterprise. That requires relatively low taxes and relatively low spending that does not then look to huge borrowing.
The need is to trim, not to trim for the sake of new excess. The Democrats will get my vote when they learn as much.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies.
