The Clinton administration is not a rerun of Carter-era liberalism.
There is a fundamental difference between Carterites and Clintonistas. Jimmy Carter believed in America and wanted to reform what he thought were some rough edges. In contrast, President Clinton believes the country he is governing needs to be reconstructed.Some foreign policy experts have concluded that Clinton lacks a foreign policy because he believes America's role in the world has been inimical to left-wing causes. Clinton's tax, health and retirement policies point to the same conclusion: Individual responsibility is out, and the nanny state is in.
Clinton's budget director told the press that one purpose of the one-third increase in income tax rates on the wealthy is to overturn Reaganism by re-establishing the supremacy of the federal government's claim to personal income. We are entitled to what is left over after government uses our money to attend to "public needs."
Clinton's health plan is designed to make health care more egalitarian. It does this by infringing the individual's right to buy as much health care as he needs or wants outside of regional pools.
Clinton would limit this right by capping the amount employers can spend on insurance premiums. He believes that by limiting the amount of health care that can be purchased, more is available to be distributed to those who cannot afford health care.
This ancient socialist principle would also apply to housing and literally every other commodity. If people were not allowed to build large homes, there would be less demand for building materials and carpenters. Prices would be lower, and small houses would be more affordable for the poor. If prime steaks were not available, there would be more, and cheaper, hamburger and grain.
The goal of Clintonomics is to reduce the rewards that flow to individual success in order to achieve more equality of result. Clinton believes that health care costs too much because rich companies buy their work forces too much and rich individuals buy themselves too much. Limiting private demand will lower the price of medicine, and these "savings" will finance the provision of free health care to those who are without.
Our pensions have been protected from government plunder by law that requires the funds to be invested prudently and solely for the benefit of workers and retirees. Clinton wants to change that law in order to direct pension money into bonds that would be repaid from revenues generated from revitalized inner cities.
In other words, private pension funds would be tapped for investments in low-income housing and would be repaid by what - high rents?
Some state and local governments already have turned their state employees' pension funds into guinea pigs, using them for "socially desirable" investments. The losses to date total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Once politicians like Clinton get their hands on our private pension funds, we will never see them again.
In Clinton's new America, the rewards of success will be sparse.