No question, Dubya did quite well in the debates. Gore did even better, however, because his stand on the issues was backed with fully researched facts.
The problem with the across the board tax cut proposed by Bush is that it goes too far. Forty percent of the proposed tax cut goes to that top 1%. It is a fact that Bush does not deny that his plan gives a larger tax break to the handful who earn $1,000,000 or more per year than he plans to spend on new military spending, healthcare and education COMBINED. The premise behind the American tax system is fairness--i.e., those who have much more than they need for basic necessities of life give more to make up for the little given by the millions who don't know where their next meal is coming from. Bush's plan is simply not fair.
About that "get things done." Bill Clinton and Al Gore twice shut down the Federal government rather than sign on to spending bills that showered pork upon key political districts. He accomplished the greatest economic turnaround in this or any other nation's history, and all the while fighting personal attacks and obstructionist behavior of the Republican controlled congress. Look it up, don't merely take Rush Limburger's word for it. Which brings out the question, what could Clinton have achieved if the REpugs had not been such a smug, stubborn roadblock. During Reagan's years, twice the REpublicans voted down a balanced budget agreement. Clinton and Gore passed this sensible legislation only because Al Gore, in his capacity as legislator, cast the tie breaking vote.
Know why the social security threshold age is being raised already? Because Ronnie REagan raided, with a presidential executive order, what until he came along had been an unbreakable trust fund. He did so to conceal some of the huge deficits he was running. $3,000,000,000,000 spent that he did not have during his first six years in office--he doubled the total of all the deficits ever incurred by an American administration. Where did all that money go? Certainly not to the American people. During Reagan's years inflation reached an all-time high of 28%, and at the same time unemployment rose to a high of, what was it, 22%? Today, thanks to the sound fiscal policies practiced by this Democratic administration (the man has a big set of huevos, going against even his own party), inflation is less than 5%, unemployment is at an all-time low (3.4%).
The male life expectancy in the US is still 67; for females the expectancy is 72. But this is a rather silly thing for you to focus on, isn't it? Even if the retirement age were dropped to 60, few of us would draw out of it all the money we had paid in. Tough, and hardly fair unless you live to be a 100. However, what about all those widows and children and disabled 22yr old social security recipients? If healthy 20-somethings are permitted to pay into an "untouchable" private account,, friend, who will pay the benefits of you and me, for the trust fund will be bankrupt. Bush and his Repug colleagues know that this is the aboslute truth: call me cynical, but I beleive the Republican Party wants just that: to bankrupt the Fund. They fought like hell to defeat it when Roosevelt proposed it, and they have been slicing at, or trying to, ever since.
True, governments do not create the wealth; they do tax it. They tax it to provide essential services -- fire, police, bldg inspectors, DOT inspectors, and hundreds of other categories of regulators whose purpose is to protect the health, wealth and freedoms of the people. When I was in high school the top tax rate in this nation was 98%. The wealthy cried, but they paid, and, guess what, they still prospered.
For years they've been lobbying for repeal of capital gains taxes. Investment would soar, they say, if they don't have to pay taxes on gains. Do you even know how those work? If a businessman sells a business or portion thereof for a profit, he has xx years to reinvest the money, and he pays no taxes on it--the capital gains taxes apply only if the profiteer puts the money in his hip pocket. Today, they're crying about the "death tax." The present exemption for an individual is $650,000. So, unless you leave an estate valued at about $1,000,000 the estate escapes tax free. I and Al Gore are in favor of even larger exemptions for small businesses and family farms. But I for one believe that when Bill Gates dies, he does not have the right to leave $65,000,000,000 untaxed so that the next forty generations of his family can sit on their butts and do nothing.
Corporations do not create wealth; they use wealth already created, in most cases. Microsoft's bill Gates did not begin life as a corporation. And no one would deny that corporations, being legal entities, not people, are not expected to have a conscience, whcih they obviously do not. If the USDA bans a drug in the US to protect the health of the people, the corporation merely packs it up and sells it in some poor desperate backwoods country.
Okay, as to Bush's intelligence. Daddy Bush donated a dormitory to Dubya's university...might that not affect the grading applied to his papers? As for his work in the private sector, friend, as to his vaunted oil business, every well he sank was DRY. If his daddy had not been president, it is likely he would be in jail, for his part in the failure of a savings & loan.
Clinton/Gore did have eight years to fix Medicare, etc. Where did you spend the last eight years? They sent several proposed bills to Congress. But the REpublican Congress was determined to rob Democrats of the credit for fixing the systems that they, and Ronnie REagan, and George the Daddy screwed up.
I wish that Clinton could run again. Gore may not be quite the man that Clinton was; he may be even better. Time will tell. If the American people are smart enough to elect him. If we deserve the continuation of the strong Clinton economy.
Gary Addis
