Originally posted by: ProfJohn
1. Obama and the Democrats are using fear now ?The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse.?
The issue has never been the use of fear, it's the abuse of fear.
Obama has also had optimistinc messages that things will get better, just as FDR said 'the only thing to fear is fear itself', even while saying his programs were urgently needed.
It's the exaggeration of fear, the use of fear to mislead, the excesses, that are a problem.
2. Bill Clinton did nothing to fundamentally change the nations economic path. If we were operating under Reagan's trickle down economics at the start of his term we were still operating under them at the end of his term. Clinton raised income taxes slightly, but also lowered capital gains taxes too.
Now let's look at the fact PJ, as usual, has left out, and discuss the relevant Clinton *proposals* in discussing his approach as well as what he got passed.
As Salon reported at the time, there were actually:
...Clinton's progressive proposals for revamping Social Security, raising the minimum wage and establishing "universal savings accounts" as a supplemental pension scheme.
With the exception of his deplorable plan to spend billions on the destabilizing Star Wars boondoggle, Clinton's address represented the most direct challenge to the conventional wisdom (or, more accurately, the conventional idiocy) of conservatism in many years. Experience has taught him -- and by now should have taught the rest of us -- that the canned conservative nostrums about taxation, growth and regulation are thoroughly discredited. Clinton's call for government-sponsored investment of Social Security funds in the stock market, a clear rejection of his old slogan regarding the demise of "big government," stunned those on the right who have been scheming for years to "privatize" the retirement system and profit from billions annually in commissions.
His demand for a substantial, dollar-an-hour hike in the minimum wage must have reminded the Republicans of their painful humiliation in 1996 -- when he and the Democrats fought for and won a similar increase, over the protest of conservatives who believe the minimum wage should be abolished. And the same ideologues already have denounced his "USA" proposal, which would encourage savings by distributing a portion of future budget surpluses to the working poor, as potentially the greatest redistribution of wealth in American history.
Not the 'almost no change' of PJ's spin, but plenty of progressive attempts, and a repudiation of the Reagan policies. 'greates redistribution of wealth to the poor in history'.
Now, let's talk about his leadership in a positive area. The income tax increase on the wealthy he got passed, he fought for. The battle was hard enough that it only passed because of Gore breaking the tie vote, with a 218-216 vote in the House - every Republican in Congress voted against his budget (sound familiar for our lock-step friends?). It's widely viewed that his win cost the Democrats Congress in 1994 (reminiscent of LBJ's civil rights bill costing Democrats the White House in most elections since because of the critial southern states). That was leadership for him to fight that hard and pay that price for the right policy.
Now let's hold the Republicans a bit ccountable for their positions on his tax increase.
Again from the Salon recounting of the quotes:
[Newt Gingrich] in August 1993: "The tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people off of work and onto unemployment and will actually increase the deficit."
How soon would these awful consequences arrive? "I believe this will lead to a recession next year," Gingrich said, but abandoned caution a few weeks later. "Stay tuned for the next 60 days," he opined. "I think we're frankly now living on borrowed time." Now the former speaker has plenty of time on his own to rethink these views.
Gingrich was hardly alone in his angry orations about what he and other Republicans incorrectly called "the largest tax increase in American history." Practically every conservative in Congress popped up to echo their great leader's warning. "A recipe for economic disaster," squawked Phil Crane of Illinois. "It is going to lead to a Clintastrophy, an economic Clintastrophy," quipped Indiana's Dan Burton.
It's no surprise when flaky reactionaries like Burton and Crane parrot stupid prophecies, but after five or six years of strong expansion and deficit reduction, the deep-thinking savants who now head the relevant House and Senate committees sound just as dumb.
Back on April 1, 1993, Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, distinguished chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, displayed little wit and less wisdom when he said, "April Fool, America. This Clinton budget plan will not create jobs, will not grow the economy, and will not reduce the deficit."
His Texas colleague Gramm, moving up this year to chair the Senate Banking Committee, was even more voluble and equally mistaken. "We are buying a one-way ticket to a recession," he claimed in August 1993. More than five years later, we still haven't gotten there. "I want to predict here tonight," Gramm said then, "that if we adopt this bill the American economy is going to get weaker and not stronger, the deficit four years from today will be higher than it is today and not lower ... When all is said and done, people will pay more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, the government will spend more money, and the American people will be worse off."
Another outspoken opponent was Kasich, the youthful Ohioan now preparing to run for president. But if he still recalls what he said in '93, he may have to switch parties first. "This plan will not work," he proclaimed in a CNN interview. "If it was to work, then I'd have to become a Democrat and believe that more taxes and bigger government is the answer."
Well, that depends on the question, congressman. But when we consider Social Security, income inequality and other pressing problems of the new economy, it will pay to remember how consistently wrong the right has been for the last decade or so.
The era of Reaganomics is dead, and President Clinton killed it.
Note, I've independantly researched the right's statements, and these are the tip of the iceberg. Where's the accountability?
3. Clinton was so successful that after two years in office the Republican won one of the greatest election victories in the history of the country. More seats changes hands in 1994 than BOTH 2006 and 2008 put together.
Now, justify why he deserved to lose them. For his policies that led to balancing the budget - *including* his first two years of deficit reduction, to counter your previous oft-repeated falshehood that it was all about the Republican congress? No, this was the public making a mistake - Clinton's tax increase was right and the history shows it.
For the record, here are the tax changes in his 1993 budget, courtesy of Wikipedia:
It created 36 percent and 39.6 income tax rates for individuals.
It created a 35 percent income tax rate for corporations.
The cap on Medicare taxes was repealed.
Transportation fuels taxes were hiked by 4.3 cents per gallon.
The taxable portion of Social Security benefits was raised.
The phase-out of the personal exemption and limit on itemized deductions were permanently extended.
4. Everything meaningful that happened under Clinton happened with the Republicans in control of congress. Clinton's first two years were a total disaster in which he made one bad move after another. The "Clinton factor" would not exist without the Republican congress.
Boy, it sure didn't take you long to repeat the lie I mentioned above, that I have corrected many times, but which you continue to repeat, if is 'softened' form now.
Now for the facts - take a look at
this chart of the US deficit. It shows that Clinton was reducing the deficit just as much his first two years with the Democratic congress.
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