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Of course we can cut taxes and reduce the federal deficit. Back in 1976, Jimmy Carter, who would never lie to us, said our tax system was a disgrace to the human race and that the budget could be balanced by 1980.
Bob Dole was in the U.S. Senate then, in a position to help make this happen, but for some reason, it didn't. Taxes didn't go down enough to matter, and the federal budget fell further out of balance.
Along came Ronald Reagan, an economics major in college, and he said we could cut taxes and reduce the federal deficit, all on account of the Laffer Curve.
Cut taxes, and you stimulate economic growth. So even though tax rates decrease, overall government income rises, allowing the deficit to be reduced.
Perhaps there was some economic growth hereabouts in the
1980s, but if so, I missed it. After examining the national
media, we figured that there were typographical errors --
this was not morning in America,
but mourning in
America.
Climax Molybdenum, which had 3,000 people on the payroll at the start of the decade, had fewer than 100 at the end. Coal mines closed farther south. Other proposed mining projects -- Cyprus at Tallahassee Creek, Homestake on Marshall Pass -- were abandoned, and CF&I quit using the Monarch Quarry.
On a national level, taxes were cut and some portions of the economy, such as bond trading and stock speculation, did grow -- but the deficit grew even faster. Mythology has it that the spendthrift Democratic Congress caused federal spending to exceed revenues during the Reagan years.
But the truth is a little more complicated. Congress actually appropriated less than the Reagan administration requested when budgets were submitted.
It was within the power of Ronald Reagan to submit a balanced budget, but his administration never did. It was within the power of the House of Representatives, then controlled by Democrats, to pass a balanced budget -- but that never happened, either.
And it was certainly within Bob Dole's power then -- he was Senate Majority Leader in 1985-86, when the deficit grew by $459 billion -- to move toward a balanced budget. But he didn't.
At the time, he thought the Reagan supply-side
approach was irresponsible, and once joked that The good
news is that a bus load of supply-siders went over a cliff.
The bad news is that three seats were empty.
In the 1988 campaign, George Bush, who had denounced
supply-side Laffer theory as voodoo economics,
announced that we could read his lips: No new taxes.
Spending could be brought under control by something called
a flexible freeze.
Taxes went up -- apparently the lip-readers erred and he
was really saying Know new taxes
-- and after
election day, the flexible freeze was as valid as
Confederate money. The national debt increased by $933
billion during the Bush years.
Democratic candidate Bill Clinton was a bit more modest in his promises in 1992 -- the annual deficit could be cut, which has happened, and middle-class tax rates could be reduced, which might have occurred to some degree, although the complexity of our tax code makes it impossible to know.
The point here is not to attack either party -- there's ample blame to go around -- but to point out that for the past generation, candidates have been elected who promised to cut taxes and reduce the national debt.
Instead, taxes and the debt have both risen. Bob Dole knows that, so why is he making the same tired promises that nobody else, of either party, has ever come close to fulfilling?
If Dole knows how this miracle can be accomplished, why didn't he explain the formula when he was in the U.S. Senate? Did it just arrive by some sort of revelation, striking him on the road from Washington to Russell?
Of course not. Dole will go around saying things he knows are not true just because his advisers think that we're stupid enough to believe.
And that's the tragedy of this election. There are issues that should be raised by a challenger, especially when the challenger is a Midwestern Republican who is suspicious of federal power.
Why is it any of the federal government's business what I or my children watch on television? Or see at the movies? Or transmit or receive through a computer? Since when is a city's curfew a federal matter? Why does the FBI continue to compile dossiers on American citizens? Just what acts of domestic terrorism might be prevented by making it easier for the feds to tap your telephone?
Dole does represent the party of limited
government,
especially at the federal level, and these
are issues that belong in a national campaign as the
Clinton administration continues to promote
protection
that further erodes the Bill of
Rights.
But instead of addressing something important, like protecting our constitutional liberties, Dole babbles on, making promises that no one has ever been able to keep.
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