European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 1, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Monday March 1t 1993 commentary i the stars and stripes Page 15clinton s plan starting to look like Snake Oil William f. Buckley it is my feeling that Bill Clinton has the most scalable political personality since John f. Kennedy. He gives the impression of total immersion in the problems of everybody Well not quite everybody As though he had risen from a Baptist initiation with water coming out of every one of his pores designed to Wash away the problems of Industrial workers Farmers merchants shipbuilders Gays deficit watchers the sick the halt and the lame. It works miracles on television As witness his great coup with the kids in the White House. The viewer would not have been surprised if at the end of the visit he had officially adopted All 40 of them and Given them quarters in the White House in All those rooms emptied by his Economy drive. There is of course the. Difficulty that More and More observers Are pointing to however reluctantly. It is the encroaching sense of the con Man the sense also that All of those people around him have become shuls. An example of this is Alan Greenspan. Quot those of us who have very closely watched or. Greenspan s career know that there Are grounds on which he stands very firmly. One of them is that an increase in faces is exactly what one ought not to do when in a recession. A second is that the private sector invests much More shrewdly than the Public sector so that the idea of for example the government investing in High tech instead of at amp to and Microsoft or whoever is a bad one. When the government decides it would be fun to land a Man on the Moon then the private sector simply Steps out of the Way and says go ahead. This is not our bag not unless it is established that the Moon is made of 22-Karat Gold. But otherwise let shrewd private investment seek out productive avenues of Industry. But then what do we hear from or. Greenspan hours after the state of the Union address he thinks its just Fine and was Able to hear every word of it Given that he was seated next to. Hillary. Then we have or. Clinton s Odd propensity for utter confusion with numbers. When during the Campaign the Bush people took the figures from Clinton s like higher taxes not e s speeches Ana Saia tvs looks to us like Miner taxes no just for people making $200,006 per year but for Popli making $60,000, George Ste Nanopoulos Clinton running emollient was there simply to laugh away with the highest pitch of disdain the terrible exaggerations of the Republican critics. It turns out that the republicans underrated the incidence of higher expenses which will be paid by peo ple earning $20,000 or More per year. There is no Force apparently that stands in the Way of or. Clinton a relentless Pursuit of fairness which is to tax corporations and americans who Are drawing Down substantial incomes. He has Given the word Quot fairness an entirely new meaning. Presumably the More you tax the wealthy the fairer you Are. He does not remind his audiences that it was democratic congresses that passed the 1981 and the 1986 acts reducing the top taxation rate to 28 percent. Now it is Quot fair to make that 36 percent. Plus 2.9 percent extra for medicare. Plus taxation of 85 percent of social Security benefits. Plus non deductibility of High salaries Ana business lunches since or. Clinton never allows himself to question whether these higher taxes might not be counterproductive one wonders whether there is any philosophical obstacle to his suggesting a 100 percent tax after of say $150,000? on the other hand Why not $100,000? i mean Isnit that what fairness has come to mean then there is that Rich vein of disingenuous Ness. When suddenly a tax becomes Revenue. If 85 percent of social Security dividends Are going to be taxed then x billion dollars less in social Security payments is going 1o go from Washington to american citizens. Run that through the Clinton newspeak machine and we see not a tax increase but a spending Cut. Just think for one moment if that Man Euver had been tried by Tricky Dick he d have been run out of town with wet towels. Now its just possible that the boy scout do goodness of the Clinton Persona will make All the above vaguely ii a a a a a a corporation depressing cedes under the hug the handshakes the exalted rhetoric. But it s possible also that there is a hard intelligence out there among the american people and that a year or two from now the ebullience will suddenly Stop working for him As reality creeps in like ironweed isolating the Giggle House at 1600 Pennsylvania ave. C in hmm Prthu syndic voters want to see action on budget deficit the voters got their first payback this month for their decision to give one party a Chance to govern. It was a Small thing in itself but it portends bigger More substantial rewards Down the line. What happened was this on the first weekend after president Clinton had offered his economic program congressional democrats touring their Home districts found that the voters a who Are nothing if not smart a already had sniffed out the weak Points in the presidents ambitious and Complex plan. Contrary to the Quot expert opinion in Washington they were not angry at the Prospect of higher taxes and for the most part welcomed the Prospect of additional investment in preschool health and education programs and jobs for the unemployed. A a but they wanted reassurance that the spending cuts were real and that they would be enforced so that the taxes would go to reducing the deficit not increasing the size of government. When the first of the lawmakers got Back to Washington the tone of the conversations Back in their districts was relayed to House speaker Thomas s. Foley a Wash and his lieutenants. By the time the members of the big freshman class of democrats caucuses the following afternoon to Exchange views the party leadership already was moving to revise the timetable and put the vote on Long term spending cuts and deficit reduction ahead of the vote on the Short term economic stimulus package which will temporarily boost Rcd Ink spending. The freshmen sent the message As rep. Tom Barlow Day said in an interview that the vote on Long term deficit reduction Quot has to be binding to be incredible to their constituents. All this was communicated quickly to the White House and legislative strategy was revised accordingly. Howard Paster Clinton Stop lobbyist tells me the Lite House had David s. Broder Ovist White House Hac been thinking along those lines itself. But the Public impression and the expectation of such key legislators As House appropriations committee chairman William h. Natcher Day was that Clinton wanted the economic stimulus which is politically painless to move first and fast and the More painful tax hikes and deficit reduction to come along weeks or even months later. Whatever the Case by the next Day everyone in the democratic Chain of command agreed that the deficit reduction pact would have to precede the stimulus spending a or else the voters Ould not believe that the budget mess would really be helped by the higher taxes they would pay. The Point that needs to be underlined is that this important adjustment could not have been made except for the fact that Clinton the congressional leaders and the big majority of the freshmen Are All democrats who have a Clear common political interest in trying to make this1 economic package a Success. A Republican president would not have been the Shenef Ciary of a similar course correction. Just contrast last week s smooth and almost effortless Man Euver by the democrats with the painful and protracted on again Oft again months of bickering and negotiating that preceded the budget agreement Between resident Bush and the congressional democrats in 1990. That was a serious deficit reduction measure. But the politics of the inter party squabbling was so Tierce that Bush later was forced to repudiate his own Handiwork. What happened illustrates a Point made by the Brookings institution s Thomas Mann at a conference on gridlock in government cosponsored by Brookings Ana the committee on the constitutional system. Arguing that there is a More of a sense of shared political stakes Between the president and Congress Quot now that both Are controlled by the democrats Mann said a there is a reasonable Chance of improving the program As it moves along a through a coalition of conservative democrats and fiscally responsible  my Hunch is that he is exactly right. Congressional democrats Are about to teach Clinton something he should have Learned from Paul Tsongas in last year s democratic primaries and from Ross Perot in the general election the voters done to want palliative they want serious and substantial action on the deficit. As Barlow put it the freshman democrats believe a a it would be a National tragedy of the highest order if two Yean from now wed raised taxes and provided economic stimulus and still were looking at a $300 billion deficit.�?�. Rep. Timothy j. Penny a Minn a head of an informal caucus of some $0 democratic budget Hawks said his group is preparing a menu of further reductions. House republicans Are writing their own budget alternative which their ranking budget committee member rep. John r. Kasich a Ohio vows will More than match the deficit reduction goals Clinton has set. And Senate re publicans behind sen. Pete v. Domenici . Will Likely Call for a More serious attack on entitlement spending for the affluent than Clinton has proposed. The dynamic is entirely different this year. And the main reason for the improvement is that last november the voters decided to end divided government. C the a Wrington Pott