NORMAN — Editor, The Transcript:
This past weekend, Tea Party activists marched on Washington D.C. in yet another attempt to deflect blame for our country’s failed economic policies away from their rightful place in the administration of our previous president, in order to minimize their own culpability as President George W. Bush’s most ardent supporters.
Their refusal to look at past errors, however, prevents the Partiers from assessing how we got to this economic low-point in the first place, which economists trace back to President Ronald Reagan’s “supply-side” economics that shrank the middle class and resulted in a $4 trillion deficit.
President George H. W. Bush dedicated the early years of his presidency to reducing this number, but his attempts at fiscal reform were hampered by Republicans, partly because they involved drawing down Reagan’s tax cuts, a policy that continues to lack Tea Party support today.
President Clinton ended his presidency with both a surplus and reduction in the debt. Excluding the “social security surplus” and using a less-generous system of accrual accounting, Clinton’s surplus is calculated between $46 billion and $86.4 billion in 2000 alone.
While the stock market bubble contributed to this prosperity, other factors, including strong economic growth, higher family incomes, lower unemployment rates and higher home ownership, confirm Clinton’s economic successes.
National debt figures, which are favored by conservatives, show that Clinton arrived in office with a debt of around $281 billion and left with a debt of around $133 billion — still impressive.
It is clear by any measure that President George W. Bush’s economic policies erased this prosperity for all but his wealthy cronies, as by 2004, Bush’s deficit stood at around $415 billion, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates his cumulative debt to be somewhere between $2.3 trillion and $4.7 trillion.
Ultimately, nobody can spin these most recent numbers to make them look good, and that is the great conundrum for today’s Tea Party.
Hampered by their inability to admit to the origins of our economic predicament in the presidencies of the very people they elected, they instead cling to the same failed policies of tax cuts, unrestrained military spending and a lack of big business regulations implemented by their predecessors.
We can only hope the Republican Party will seek distance from the Partiers and, instead, find strong leadership among their most educated and intelligent members, so we can all work together toward economic recovery.
ALLISON LEE PALMER
Norman
