You know how Democrats was nostalgic about the Clinton years when, they claim, the Arkansas Democrat’s economic policies lifted us out of a lingering recession and the charismatic Southerner single-handedly balanced the budget. There are a number of problems with this narrative, the first being that the recession ended before Clinton took office. He was just lucky that it appeared to linger through the 1992 campaign.
Now, to be sure, I do give the Democrat credit for learning from his mistakes and his party’s setbacks at the ballot box. After the 1994 elections, he pivoted to the center and worked with congressional Republicans to enact real reforms and balance the budget. Indeed, the unemployment rate in November 1992 was 7.4%, down from its peak of 7.8% in June of that year.
There’s another thing to bear in mind when talking about Bill Clinton’s economic policies. Senate Republicans blocked his “stimulus”. From the April 22, 1993 New York Times:
Senate Republicans killed President Clinton’s economic stimulus program today, maintaining their filibuster until Democrats surrendered and agreed to limit the bill to $4 billion for extended unemployment benefits.
Mr. Clinton’s first serious legislative defeat was marked by complaints from Democrats in the Senate and the White House. But Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, was satisfied that the Republicans had shown that they deserved to be taken seriously. He avoided gloating, and promised occasional cooperation with the President.
A brief, harsh outburst from Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, served as the eulogy for Mr. Clinton’s original $19.5 billion measure, which was proposed in February.
Emphasis added. $19.5 billion dollars ($31.4 billion in today’s dollars), chump change to the guy who has Clinton’s old job. Does look like Bob Dole actually did some good while in the Senate. Had Republicans succeeded in filibustering the Illinois Democrat’s stimulus plan, we might have seen a less anemic recovery.
Do hope the president recalls that Clinton’s success may well have derived, in part, from his failure to pass his “stimulus.”
No, they’re hoping they can raise taxes like/in excess of what Clinton did. The problem, though, is that we don’t have the tech bubble which resulted in revenues IN SPITE of Clinton’s tax increases.
And I hope somebody shuts Warren Buffett’s cake hole. He’ll benefit financially from tax increases (i.e. the libs will make this rich guy richer). Seems to me that it’s actually the liberals who want to protect the rich and not the Republicans, as they suggest in their projection whining.
Dan, thanks for a reminder of that far-away time when the dollar was worth a lot more than it is today, Democrats wouldn’t dare propose a Porkulus higher than $19.5 billion, and Republicans would be sane and smart enough to block even that.
The 90s economy was troubled, with the Fed (at Clinton’s urging) inflating a bubble-economy to compensate for the drag from such Big Government policies as Clinton did manage to enact. But those troubles were nothing, compared to what we have now. After all, the country was still coming off the Reagan-Volcker policies of the 80s which had made it richer.
P.S. Anyone who can think, as Krugman and the Neo-Keynesians do, that America’s economy is bad for a lack of “demand” – which means, the American consumer not being greedy enough to consume, and/or there not being enough cheap cash and handout dollars sloshing around after Porkulus, the Wall Street and Government Union bailouts, 2-year unemployment benefits, ZIRP and Quantitative Easing – please raise your hand. Obama could use a supporter.
Meanwhile, the sane people see that our economic problems are because (1) we have borrowed way too much, and (2) Obama makes it worse, growing government like a cancer that sucks the life from productive people.
The WSJ Online has a good article refuting Obama’s Unicorn-based Neo-Keynesian economics. Here is a sample.
More specific refutations of Hi Cas and Levi’s epic stupidity:
Unfortunately there is an Uncle Ben passing out free dollars, and that’s where it gets confusing.
The free dollars that he passes out dilute everyone else’s dollars (think of him as running a counterfeiting machine). They destroys the earnings and capital of the productive and successful people, as surely as if the government raised taxes.
But it takes a little bit longer. It’s harder to see. For the first few minutes, it even looks like good times as people literally have more money. That enables the neo-Keynesians to pretend they don’t see it. They’re not very intelligent that way. I say their lack of intelligence there is a choice; they do not wish to see it. They *want* to believe that Uncle Ben’s Counterfeiting Machine is the perpetual-motion machine they’ve been seeking, the philosopher’s stone, the true “free lunch”.
(continued) Hence, their stress on the myth of “the multiplier”. It’s been shown to be extremely problematic, something that probably declines as country gets more indebted, and something that may have been under 1 for Obama’s “stimulus” (i.e., the dollars he spent may have actually cost the economy output and jobs). But neo-Keynesians don’t care. Can’t bother them with mundane crap, like real-world facts and results of their bad policies.
ILC, the “Keynesian Multiplier” is the perfect liberal economic trick. It can not be measured or quantified with any degree of accuracy; so it can be whatever number a liberal wants to justify spending. It’s like a unicorn, so I suggest that Obama’s economic beliefs be labeled “Unicorn Economics.”
#8: V the K, why can’t liberals approach economics with the same integrity that they’ve shown when the issue is the environment? At least in that arena they stick with SCIENCE. You know…really hot summers are unmistakeable evidence that we face imminent extinction from global climate change, and conversely, bitterly cold winters are unmistakeable evidence that we face imminent extinction from global climate change. Like I said, SCIENCE. Why can’t we all agree on a similarly reasonable (and FINAL) consensus when it comes to economics? So frustrating…