BACK • 
The Washington "Blame Game"
It's less than a year since the last national election, and more than a year until the next one. But in the wonderful world of politics (Washington D.C.-style), it's not too early to start the "blame game." If we believe what we read in some of the national publications and hear on television, our current economic slowdown is completely the fault of George W. Bush. Never mind that the president has only been in office for eight months, and never mind that a year ago, still in the thick of the campaign, he was warning that the economy wasn't nearly as a healthy as we believed, and his advisors were telling him they saw weakness on the horizon. At the time, you may recall, the Democrats heatedly denied that the economy was slowing, claiming that Mr. Bush was doing nothing but playing politics, and scaring Americans into thinking something was wrong, when in fact, things almost couldn't be better.
Well, what a difference a few months make. When George W. came to office, he decided to keep his promises, one being a reduction in taxes. The president delivered on that two months ago, and the $38.8 billion in over-taxation euphemistically referred to in Washington as "surpluses" are being returned to the public.
Yet, what are we asked to believe? We are told that the president's bad economic policies have caused this slowdown. In fact, the liberal left, those "big spenders" who believe that you and I cannot manage our money nearly as well as they can, have now decided that THE TAX CUT HAS CAUSED THE ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN. That's right, you didn't misread, and that was not a "typo." Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Richard Gebhardt went before the liberal media, who gobbled it up with a steam shovel, with that declaration.
That contention is so absurd and ridiculous that it barely merits the ink required in this paper to print the statement, but since this is the new attack from the liberal left, we must deal with it.
The idea that the current tax cut is causing the slowdown is foolishness. Every freshman in High School Econ. 101 learns that it was in fact John Maynard Keynes, the liberal left economist, who taught that cutting taxes, especially in a slowdown, would stimulate the economy. Keynes went on to contend that we shouldn't bother about budget balancing in a slowdown, get that economy moving with tax cuts and massive federal spending.
Reasons the economy has slowed are varied and many. But, mostly, I believe, it is because we were running at a pace that was too hot. We have not gone into a recession (by definition, two negative quarters of Gross Domestic Product back-to-back), and I believe we will not. I honestly believe that despite the recent bad news on unemployment, third- and fourth-quarter Gross Domestic Product will be higher and surprise quite a few people. I also believe that unless we are going to repeal a good many economic laws, the Federal Reserve rate cuts, the tax rebates, which are continuing to flow into the economy, and home refinancing, is creating the monetary power necessary to end the slowing and restart a move toward economic growth in the years ahead. I also think that next year we're probably going to have Gross Domestic Product growth in the area of about 3%.
Despite what the democrats are telling you, with the help of their P.R. departments at ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN, next year will be a fairly decent year. In the meantime, the bottom line on all of this is that it is driving the democrats crazy that some of our money is being returned to us. They hit below the belt by trying to scare senior citizens about Social Security. It is a false issue and they know it! The money we are rightfully trying to lay aside now for Social Security is for the "out" years, 2030 and beyond. There's virtually no one now on Social Security or working whose Social Security is threatened by current economic policies. That is just absolutely false.
It is, however, a big shame that the likes of Gebhardt and Daschle have chosen to put politics ahead of the national interest. Just get the economy going again, there will be more than enough surpluses to go around. "We the people" can get a few pennies back, and Washington can go back to doing what it does best, SPENDING.
(Tom Butenhoff is a First Vice President with J. E. Liss and Company, Inc.
in Milwaukee. The views are his, and not necessarily those of Liss
Financial Services or the Job Connection/Hiring
Network.)