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IN 1992, NEWLY elected President Bill Clinton entered office in an economic slowdown and inherited a mess that included the largest budget deficit to date.
After 12 years of the Reagan/Bush supply side economics, the drain of the borrow-and-spend politics of those previous years had to stop. He and congress did the unpopular thing and raised taxes on the wealthiest and set the stage for the economic boom of the nineties. Pay as you go, as with all our budgets, was resumed and by the time they left office the budget was balanced and was even producing surpluses.
Enter the current administration and the spending is out of hand, the borrowing greater and the deficit on a yearly basis is nearly $500 billion — the largest ever.
The surplus created by Clinton/Gore and the Republican congress is gone. It has been blown across the sands of Iraq and in tax cuts to the wealthy that make no sense. Those surpluses that could have been used to bolster Social Security, fix Medicare, provide affordable college education to our kids were squandered and now again we’re left with no choice but to dig ourselves out of a hole.
The good news is we did it in 1992 and we can do it in 2008. We know how to do it and the only thing it takes is the will!
Whoever your vote goes to, just be leery of the individual who offers the free lunch. Lower taxes for the wealthy are not going to fix this problem.
Fiscal responsibility will!
Let’s get to it!
