Posted on 12/20/2017 9:29:55 PM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- "It's the economy, stupid," as we used to say back in the good old days -- the good old days being the 1990s, when the president of the United States could have molested women in the White House during business hours with impunity. In fact, if memory serves, that president, William J. Clinton, saw his popularity soar after accusations of his molestations were made public, or at least after some of them were made public. If all of them were made public, according to wisdom of the time, he might have been elected President for Life. Those were the days when then-Sens. Edward Kennedy and Christopher Dodd ranged freely on Capitol Hill and, back in New York City, young Anthony Weiner was getting amorous thoughts and restless stirrings in his lower parts about the life led by the likes of Kennedy.
Yet even in those heady times, "it" was "the economy stupid," a phrase made famous by the poet James Carville. The vibrant economy saved President Bill Clinton, and I assume it will save President Donald Trump from his shocking tweets and other inexcusable acts that are so hurtful to the bien pensants of Washington, D.C., and New York. At present, the stock market is setting record after record. That is truly significant to the lives of an increasing number of people who have money in the market or look to the market for direction. According to a CNBC All-America Economic Survey, for the first time in at least 11 years more than half those surveyed thought the prospects for the economy either good or excellent.
Unemployment is down; the Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 1.9 million jobs have been added to the economy since President Trump's inauguration. The growth in gross domestic product has been vibrant -- over 3 percent in the last two quarters -- and now the New York Fed is talking about 4 percent for this last quarter. If Carville's observation is correct -- and in the 1990s it was held to be sacred by tout le monde -- Trump and the Republicans do not have much to worry about in the off-year elections of 2018, to say nothing of the presidential election two years later.
Yet there is more. The Islamic State group, or ISIL, as it has been called, was held to be formidable back in President Barack Obama's day but has been decimated. At one time it was spreading its tentacles throughout Syria and Iraq, and one got the impression from the Obama administration that it was invincible. Doubtless there were people in his national security apparatus who considered giving ISIL a seat at the United Nations, or possibly one on the UN Security Council. Now the so-called Islamic caliphate is in terminal decline, and that is thanks to President Trump and his national security team. By the way, Trump's whole Middle Eastern policy is looking better all the time. Upon second glance, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was greeted with relative calm throughout the region, where things have quieted down from a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, the Arabs have graver concerns today, for instance Iran and missiles launched from Yemen.
Actually, on a whole range of issues, the president is looking not like a billionaire real estate developer, or even a television celebrity, but like a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School. There are his many superb court appointments. There is his successful deregulation program that is encouraging growth. He took the United States out of the Paris climate accord. He is shoring up our borders and attending to our out-of-control immigration laws, and now he has his tax reform. It cuts corporate and individual taxes and repeals the Obamacare individual mandates once thought immutable. The blooming economy will bloom some more, and my guess is that it will not contribute to the national debt as President Obama's slow growth did.
How has Donald Trump been such a wizard without conferring with Official Washington or any of the usual sages? I have researched the matter. He is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He never attended class at the Kennedy School, and if he visited a Washington think tank, it was The Heritage Foundation. Where has he gotten his ideas, and how did he learn to implement them with all the Washington wisenheimers against him? Well, here is a tip from one of Trump's earliest supporters: He got his ideas from the American experience. He is a patriot. As for how he implemented them, he did it the same way he amassed a fortune. He used his sechel -- the Yiddish word for a combination of intelligence, street smarts and wisdom. Some call it statecraft.
I don’t care much for them tying Clinton to the economy.
Reagan started that engine going, and it kept on going through Clinton’s term.
On top of that, the Republicans on Capital Hill ran a tight budget and made Clinton look good.
The guy didn’t have a freakin clue.
Reagan started it and a Gingrich Congress poured fuel on the fire creating an inferno with a combination of reduction of capital gains, welfare reform and what was thought a good idea at the time, The Balanced Budget Amendment...
Viva la Reagan Revolution!
Si amigo... si...
Oh yes, for full disclosure I should mention that Clinton opposed the useful tax cuts (wanted less of a cap gains cut). But he did move a bit unlike most Dems since.
Bill Clinton? Meh Think that was Contract With America ideas brought to you by Newt and the “Republican Revolution”
The House fulfilled Gingrich’s promise to bring all ten of the Contract’s issues to a vote within the first 100 days of the session. President Clinton called it the “Contract on America”.
Legislation proposed by the 104th United States Congress included term limits for Congressional Representatives, tax cuts, welfare reform, and a balanced budget amendment, as well as independent auditing of the finances of the House of Representatives and elimination of non-essential services such as the House barbershop and shoe-shine concessions. Following Gingrich’s first two years as House Speaker, the Republican majority was re-elected in the 1996 election, the first time Republicans had done so in 68 years, and the first time simultaneously with a Democratic president winning re-election.
Legislation:
Welfare reform
A central pledge of President Bill Clinton’s campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. However, by 1994, the Clinton Administration appeared to be more concerned with pursuing a universal health care program. Gingrich accused Clinton of stalling on welfare, and proclaimed that Congress could pass a welfare reform bill in as little as 90 days. He insisted that the Republican Party would continue to apply political pressure to the President to approve their welfare legislation.
In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that Clinton vetoed, Gingrich and his supporters pushed for passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which was intended to reconstruct the welfare system. The act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government’s responsibilities. It instituted the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamp eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and work requirements for recipients.The bill was signed into law by President Clinton on August 22, 1996.
In his 1998 book Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Gingrich encouraged volunteerism and spiritual renewal, placing more importance on families, creating tax incentives and reducing regulations for businesses in poor neighborhoods, and increasing property ownership by low-income families. He also praised Habitat for Humanity for sparking the movement to improve people’s lives by helping them build their own homes.
Balancing the federal budget
Although congressional Republicans had opposed Clinton’s Deficit Reduction Act of 1993, a key aspect of the 1994 Contract with America was the promise of a balanced federal budget. After the end of the government shutdown, Gingrich and other Republican leaders acknowledged that Congress would not be able to draft a balanced budget in 1996. Instead, they opted to approve some small reductions that were already approved by the White House and to wait until the next election season.
By May 1997, Republican congressional leaders reached a compromise with Democrats and President Clinton on the federal budget. The agreement called for a federal spending plan designed to reduce the federal deficit and achieve a balanced budget by 2002. The plan included a total of $152 billion in bipartisan tax cuts over five years.[50] Other major parts of the spending plan called for $115 billion to be saved through a restructuring of Medicare, $24 billion set aside to extend health insurance to children of the working poor, tax credits for college tuition, and a $2 billion welfare-to-work jobs initiative.
President Clinton signed the budget legislation in August 1997. At the signing, Gingrich gave credit to ordinary Americans stating, “It was their political will that brought the two parties together.”
In early 1998, with the economy performing better than expected, increased tax revenues helped reduce the federal budget deficit to below $25 billion. Clinton submitted a balanced budget for 1999, three years ahead of schedule originally proposed, making it the first time the federal budget had been balanced since 1969.[citation needed]
Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997
In 1997, President Clinton signed into effect the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which included the largest capital gains tax cut in U.S. history. Under the act, the profits on the sale of a personal residence ($500,000 for married couples, $250,000 for singles) were exempted if lived in for at least 2 years over the last 5. (This had previously been limited to a $125,000 once-in-a-lifetime exemption for those over the age of 55.) There were also reductions in a number of other taxes on investment gains.
Additionally, the act raised the value of inherited estates and gifts that could be sheltered from taxation.[55] Gingrich has been credited with creating the agenda for the reduction in capital gains tax, especially in the “Contract with America”, which set out to balance the budget and implement decreases in estate and capital gains tax. Some Republicans felt that the compromise reached with Clinton on the budget and tax act was inadequate, however Gingrich has stated that the tax cuts were a significant accomplishment for the Republican Congress in the face of opposition from the Clinton administration. Gingrich along with Bob Dole had earlier set-up the Kemp Commission, headed by former US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp, a tax reform commission that made several recommendations including that dividends, interest, and capital gains should be untaxed.
Other legislation
Among the first pieces of legislation passed by the new Congress under Gingrich was the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, which subjected members of Congress to the same laws that apply to businesses and their employees, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. As a provision of the Contract with America, the law was symbolic of the new Republican majority’s goal to remove some of the entitlements enjoyed by Congress. The bill received near universal acceptance from the House and Senate and was signed into law on January 23, 1995.
Gingrich shut down the highly regarded Office of Technology Assessment, and relied instead on what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists called “self-interested lobbyists and think tanks”.
Was that before or after his tax increase of 1993, no wait!
His retroactive tax of 1992, he signed into law in 1993?
Was it Bill’s idea to reduce taxes in 1997 or was The Contract with America a promise he was ultimatlet forced to sign on to, as a pragmatist but only after publicly deriding every measure so he could be seen as being a good steward of the American people, when in fact he no more than an opportunist who co-opted other people’s work?
Just asking....
And all of those were passed with 100% Republican votes, nearly every time
The democrats voted at in the affirmative with about 80% participation.
Did anyone notice this article is about Trump? Not Clinton. Not Reagan. Can President Trump not hold anyone’s attention, or receive his due without bringing up two or more of his pedecessors?
“[Clinton] didn’t have a freakin clue.”
No. He didn’t. He was too busy molesting state and federal employees
“...1990s, when the president of the United States could have molested women in the White House during business hours “
Why does Emmett Tyrrell say “could have”? I think he’s part of the problem
Kasich was a big player on the balanced subject. A pity he has eviscerated any legacy he might have had by becoming one of the biggest jerks in the party.
Subject=Budget
I may be wrong, but I’d term it as him acquiescing to sign the legislation. I don’t recall these being his platform ideas.
We both know the answer to that.
Opportunist to the max...
When I see something addressed in an article, I don’t think it’s improper to out it for the misleading thing it is. Rewriting Clinton history isn’t helpful.
Trump is getting resoundingly praised all over the forum, as he should.
LOL, hey that may be true here in a sense.
I used to like the guy also. He always seemed this quiet affable guy who was pretty solid to the core. Not living in his state, perhaps I was not seeing all that he was at the time.
At any rate, I share your consternation seeing him implode like this. I tend to think I probably didn’t really get the real him way back when.
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