WASHINGTON -- Former Clinton administration officials are criticizing President George W. Bush for pointing out he inherited a sluggish economy desperately in need of stimulation from his tax-cut proposal.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't believe for a minute that Bush's anemic tax-cut plan, phased in over 10 years, will do anything for the economy. It pales in comparison in real dollars to either John F. Kennedy's tax cut in the 1960s or Ronald Reagan's 1980s tax cut. But, nevertheless, it's interesting to recall what the incoming Clinton administration was saying about the U.S. economy and the absolute need for "stimulus" of a different kind in its first 100 days in power.
I went back through Lexis-Nexis and searched news articles and speech transcripts from Jan. 20, 1993, through April 30, 1993. What I found probably won't surprise you, but it does point out the shameless hypocrisy of Bush's Democratic Party critics today.
First, it's important to remember that by the end of April 1993, Clinton had a national approval rating of just 55 percent -- the lowest of any president at that juncture in the history of modern polling. This was, in part, a reflection on his inability to pass through Congress a $16 billion "emergency economic stimulus program" that included confiscatory new taxes on the highest income brackets, a broken pledge to reduce middle-class taxes and, indeed, higher taxes for everyone.
What was the nature of the "emergency" Clinton saw in the faltering economy?
Growth was slow, and jobs were not being created at a rate that would feed the federal treasury at a rate that satisfied Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress and the White House for the first time in 12 years. Democrats were eager to boost spending on pork-barrel projects, but there just wasn't enough money flowing into Washington to make them happy.
Clinton traveled the country -- campaign-style -- in an effort to put pressure on members of the Senate to approve his tax increase.
"Without swift passage of the entire jobs package, the people of Pennsylvania will continue to suffer from a jobless recovery," he said in Sen. Arlen Specter's backyard.
"Without swift passage of the entire jobs package, the people of Delaware will continue to suffer from a jobless recovery," he told audiences in Sen. Bill Roth's backyard.
"We need a jobs package now to make sure that this recovery does happen, to make sure that this economy creates jobs," said George Stephanopoulos.
This was an emergency. The message was clear. Without the "emergency" tax increase the economy would stall.
Even the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn was not exempt from the doomsday politicking.
"Look out there at those kids," Clinton said to reporters, angrily gesturing out the Oval Office window. "They are the hostages of the Senate filibuster on the stimulus program."
But it got even worse.
"Let's not talk about compromise," Clinton said. "Let's strip all this rhetoric away. This is about whether you want to reduce the unemployment rate in America. … For whatever reason, they don't. They (Republicans) want more people to stay out of work."
Clinton suggested over and over again that only his tax-increase program could save the economy.
"If they (Republicans) want to stop the government, they can do it," he said. "I don't think it's going to be very defensible when they come back to say the economy is fine and we don't have to" do anything to create jobs.
Laura Tyson, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, justified the proposed new spending by Washington because of "a very bizarre economy."
Not even in office a month, on Feb. 15 Clinton gave a speech to the nation in which he claimed the financial condition of the country was much worse than he anticipated.
"Clinton evoked war-time terms to rally the country," reported the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a page one news story. "He described the economic condition as a crisis. He said his appeal was 'nothing less than a call to arms.' In office only 26 days, he played the ultimate card any president has -- an appeal to patriotism."
"For 12 years," said Clinton, "we have followed a different philosophy that declared government is the problem, that fairness to the middle class is less important than keeping taxes low on the wealthy, that nothing can be done about our deepest problems: Lost jobs, declining wages, increasing inequality, inadequate educational opportunity and a health care system that costs a fortune but does too little. …
"You've paid for that loss of common sense," he continued. "The typical middle-class family is working harder for less. Despite talk of a recovery, more than 9 million of our fellow citizens are out of work. As this chart indicates, if this were a real recovery, 3 million more Americans would already be back to work by now. In fact, there are more jobless people now than there were at what the experts called the bottom of the recession."
Earlier, Clinton said, "The debt is $50 billion a year bigger than we were told it was before the election."
"We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so," he said days after taking office. "Instead, we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy and shaken our confidence."
Clinton characterized the economic challenges ahead as "fearsome."
So, there you have it. Clinton trash talked the economy he inherited from his predecessor in far more harsh terms than George W. Bush has. He pointed fingers of blame. He discounted that a recovery was already under way. Only higher taxes, he said, could put people back to work. He even accused his political opponents of wanting to keep Americans from working.
Like I said, I don't think Bush's tax-cut proposal is the answer to the struggling U.S. economy -- not by a long shot. But in recognizing that there are real problems in growth, Bush and his allies have not even approached the harsh, partisan, fear-mongering, finger-pointing rhetoric of Clinton's first 100 days.