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Sept 5, 2003 Honey, its Howard Dean on the phone. He says we can do better and he wants our money back So ends the liberal myth of Howard Dean: Moderate. This urban legend brought to you by the friendly folks at the Dean campaign and fostered by their willing accomplices in the mainstream media was blown up last Friday in the Wall Street Journal by none other than Mr. Dean himself. Mr. Deans idea of you doing better is giving back the tax cuts that you got in 2001 and 2002 so he can get everyone universal heath coverage. Not exactly a sterling prescription for an ailing economy. His plan to redistribute the tax revenue of the middle class and invest it in an as-yet-unspecified large government experiment in health care would create catastrophic consequences for the U.S., and the world, economy. The irony is Mr. Dean hasnt been reading the very newspaper hes writing to. Revenue forecasts are up in most major sectors, the dollar just hit a four-month high and fourth quarter projections are pretty optimistic. The tax cuts proposed by President Bush and enacted by Congress are working and have proven to work every time theyve been tried. Instead, Mr. Dean proposes squandering a nascent recovery on the liberal pipedream of having the government provide health care for everyone. Mr. Dean spends the first part of his piece laying out the evidence that hes a thoughtful economics analyst by citing a lot of facts and sources that add up to, what exactly? That Americans are stretched thin and job security no longer exists? He does mention one thing of interest- One out of four U.S. workers is free- lancing, employed in a temporary job, self- employed, or working part time. What is wrong with any of that? Mr. Dean also complains about tax cuts that dont address our needs and saddled our children with debt for generations I would say keeping more of our money is a great way to address anybodys needs and secondly, the current projected deficits are small compared to GDP and smaller than the deficits we incurred in the 1980s. Also, in the next paragraph, Mr. Dean belies his touching concern for our grandchildren with his centerpiece proposal to repeal the tax cuts and create nationalized health care. Now, if the tax cuts created the current deficits (which they didnt), how will repealing them and spending that and much more on a health care plan eliminate the deficits? Oh, and Mr. Dean will also invest in the nations infrastructure. He also spells out a lengthy laundry list of things hes spend our money on, like extending a helping hand to states and communities, increase federal aid for special education, and increase the availability of capital for small businesses. Tacked on at the end is a neat statement, almost a throwaway line: maintaining fiscal discipline is essential to long term growth; discretionary growth must be sustainable, and the federal budget must be balanced over the business cycle. That would be exceedingly difficult to achieve given Mr. Deans obvious proclivity for profligate federal spending. Howard Dean came out of the liberal closet last week. Its refreshing to have a clear-eyed view of his plans for America should he become President. Now we know that his wrong-headed views on how to protect Americas interests abroad match his wrong-headed views on how to revitalize Americas economy. We are dong better, Mr. Dean, with no help from you. ------------ Visit Jamie's blog WWW.RANCHOSX.BLOGSPOT.COM or email Jamie Moulthrop: jmoulthrop@comcast.net Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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