Editorials / Clinton's Trickle-Down/Hillary Polluted
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
T rickle down, trickle down—ha, ha, ha. From (roughly) William Jennings Bryan's 1896 "Cross of Gold" speech to President Bill Clinton's ramblings in his State of the Union address on February 17,...
...If the economy is in such a pallid state, where is the economic theory that counsels the gigantic tax increase President Clinton prescribes...
...Tax hikes are described in economic texts today as policies that cool down overheated economies...
...From (roughly) William Jennings Bryan's 1896 "Cross of Gold" speech to President Bill Clinton's ramblings in his State of the Union address on February 17, progressives have been deriding almost any attempt by government to encourage the creation of wealth as "trickle-down economics": Ha, ha, ha, Ronald Reagan believes profits "trickle down...
...As for the "forgotten middle class," its taxes would be cut...
...Known by whom...
...He is America's greatest schizophrenic president...
...Does he really believe that all those trillions went only to the very rich...
...Actually, the economy is growing at a hefty rate of 3.8 percent...
...In accordance with earlier trickle-down economics, the benefits of higher economic output trickle down to the rest of us...
...Now its taxes are being raised...
...Even Clinton's idea of what constitutes a millionaire has trickled down: he's proposed a millionaire's tax, all right—on anyone making over $250,000 annually...
...At the third presidential debate, George Bush warned that the Clinton tax hike would trickle down to those earning $36,600...
...In accordance with the tax-andspend Democrats' trickle-down economAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...The conditions which brought us to this point are well known," the president told Congress on February 17...
...He insists that he is going to stay in touch with American people, but all evidence indicates that he has usually been strangely out of touch...
...There's no coherent economic theory to it," the economic columnist and former Treasury official Paul Craig Roberts remarks of Mr...
...According to their version, the dividing line between the fat cat and the rest of us steadily "trickles down" from an annual income of $200,000 (that being the figure intoned by presidential candidate Clinton) to an annual income of $100,000 (that being the figure intoned by President Clinton on February 15) to an annual income of $30,000 (that being the figure intoned by his loyal mouthpiece Mr...
...Yet a few months ago candidate Clinton promised only to raise taxes on $200,000-a-year voluptuaries drinking Dom Perignon and eating bonbons in Palm Beach...
...Clinton's economic package...
...All modern economic theory known of argues that this program will close down the economy...
...It was American history's black hole...
...More than $20 trillion in new wealth was created during that period...
...George Stephanopoulus on February 16) to an annual salary of $20,000 (that being the level at which the onerous energy taxes announced on February 17 kick in...
...ics, the burdens of higher taxation trickle down to the rest of us...
...He believes that during the longest period of American peacetime economic growth (from November 1982 to July 1990) only the very rich benefited...
...For them the 1980s never took place...
...Now he speaks as though the United States were in recession (during the election he spoke of depression...
...Raising taxes to lower a deficit while raising spending to stimulate an economy is another example of the schizophrenia suffered by our president with the policy wonk's brain and the flower child's heart...
...Thankfully, I was not running for office...
...Fellow fat cats, grab your wallets and run...
...Does he know that the Reagan economy created 18 million new jobs (most of which are still around and contributing wealth and tax revenue) with tax cuts...
...Not Clinton...
...Meanwhile, the highbrow intellectual, securely enveloped in a haze of left-wing partisan politics, ignored the growth and spoke solely of pending calamity...
...Throughout that decade, America's infantile left kept conjuring up ever more problems—social, political, and economic—to be laid at the door of a president whose power they were steadily cutting back...
...Well, now with the sonorous unveiling of President Bill Clinton's characteristically schizophrenic economic package, behold what we might call the progressives' version of trickle-down economics...
...My guess is that soon the conflicting burdens of that great office will break him...
...On February 15 he said "the typical middle-class family is working harder for less...
...When he is not affecting the style of just folks he is bragging of his highbrow intellectual credentials...
...Three times in pre-election columns I warned as much...
...There is none...
...There is something very odd about the candidate who promised to lower the taxes he is now raising...
...Now because George Bush raised taxes and stymied a growing economy, these people who refused to learn from recent history have one of their own in the White House...
...Throughout the 1980s just folks recognized that a growing economy was being made possible by lower taxes, restrained government growth, and restrained meddling...
...Well, there you have the tax-and-spend Democrats' trickle down, and I do not hear anyone laughing...
...But President Clinton declares the economy already as cold as a corpse, and so he will create 500,000 new (and temporary) jobs with deficit spending...
...Why did the middle class keep electing Republican presidents...
...Ah, but the New York Times reassures us that a White House official insists that "households with incomes of less than $30,000 . . . will not have their taxes increased at all...
Vol. 26 • April 1993 • No. 4
