Gore and the economy, doesn't look good.
Al Gore?s proposals to increase federal spending now exceed the total ten-year projection of federal budget surpluses by over a trillion dollars.
National taxpayers union
Al?s ?Goregantuan? Spending Is Like Nothing Since The LBJ Years. ??These are very, very, very large spending increases. The vice president really has proposed a dramatic expansion in the role and cost of the federal government,? said Carol Cox Wait, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ?There?s really nothing like it until you go back to the spending programs of LBJ's Great Society social-welfare spending.?? (Don Lambro, ?Federal Role Big In Gore Proposal; Spending Increase Largest Since LBJ,? The Washington Times, September 20, 2000)
Gore's Proposals Will Add Up To 30,000 Bureaucrats In Washington. "By
looking at the relationship between factors such as outlays,employees, and administrative costs for the agencies today that would also be involved in the Vice President?s proposals and applying these ratios to the new programs that have been proposed, the Bulletin estimates that if these proposals were fully in place today, they would require 20,000-30,000 new employees to carry them out. This range is comparable to two to three armored divisions of military troops." (Budget Bulletin, Senate Budget Committee, October 2, 2000)
The irony is that Al Gore is claiming credit for the results of, and is the beneficiary of, policies that he opposed ? he voted against the Reagan tax cut in 1982, which reduced the maximum tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent ? and still does not seem to understand. The amount of any future surplus is highly dependent upon future economic growth rates. We know the economy is more likely to grow faster when the high marginal tax rates on work, saving and investment are reduced. The Bush tax plan reduces these tax disincentives, while the Gore plan, relying primarily on targeted tax credits, does not. The
Clinton-Gore administration forecasting errors primarily came from the fact they treated variables (i.e., the relationship between tax rates and the incentive to work, save, invest and take economic risks) as constants, a conceptual mistake that continues to characterize the new Gore tax and spending plan.
(Richard W. Rahn Washington Times October 24, 2000)
Who gave us the surplus