Fifth Generation Reaganomics

First there was President Ronald Reagan's 1981 supply-side economic program . . . cut domestic spending, cut taxes on the rich, let them invest money in factories, and more people will join the workforce and contribute to the tax base.  In other words, tax work instead of wealth.  Reagan economics - called, henceforth, "Reaganomics" - worked, at least in the short term, but not the way Reagan, Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanninski, and other economic conservatives envisioned.  The rich people invested their tax cuts in themselves, and most of the jobs created in Reagan's eight years - which lowered the employment rate from 7.4 percent in February 1981 to 5.4 percent in January 1989, making Reagan the only Republican President since World War II to leave office with the unemployment rate lower than what it was when he entered office - were low-wage jobs that no one could reasonably expect to make a living from.

The tax cuts blew up the deficit and caused a recession, forcing tax increases in 1990 under the senior George Bush and another tax increase under Bill Clinton in 1993.  With the passage of a budget that year that increased domestic spending, then-House Speaker Tom Foley, a Democrat from Washington State, said we had come to the end of Ronald Reagan.

Ironically, he lost his House seat in the Gingrich revolution of 1994 that gave us a Republican Congress and Reaganomics Mark Two.  Only President Clinton's firm stand on deep spending cuts, plus a 1995 government shutdown that neutralized Speaker Newt Gingrich, prevented another deficit; in fact, with many tax hikes still in place and with measured spending cuts to boot, a budget surplus was generated.  Not to mention decent jobs.   

Then came the third iteration of Reaganomics with George Walker Bush and his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, blowing the surplus and putting the country deeper in debt and leading to the loss of good jobs that, quite frankly were lost for good.  And military spending went way up thanks to not one but two wars in the Middle East.  And then came the 2008 financial crisis.

Barack Obama then came into office with a Democratic Congress in 2009, with many Americans thinking we'd seen the last of Reaganomics. Fourth generation!  The Tea Party came into power in Washington in 2011 and brought it back.  More jobs lost, more tax breaks for wealthy people.

Now Donald Trump is the White House with a Republican Congress, and his tax reform proposal is essentially Reaganomics Mark Five - Reaganomics on steroids.  I won't go into the details, because, quite frankly, neither has Trump.  The proposal - which would pretty much give corporations a huge tax break - only takes up one page of a ream of paper. 

We've seen this movie before.  And not only does it keep getting worse, the celluloid is wearing very thin.

Kaputnik Moment

I found proposals for the 2012 federal budget - particularly cuts in federal spending for home heating assistance for the poor and Pell grants for college students - to be appalling. I wouldn't have been so appalled by the cuts if they had been proposed by the Republicans; given their history of budget priorities, that would be expected of them. But these proposed cuts came from the White House's $3.7 trillion budget blueprint!

You know, when I voted for Obama in 2008, I thought I was voting for a Democrat. Now I know how all those budget hawks who supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 felt when they were thought they were voting for a conservative.

President Obama did try to appease his base with increases in education spending as well as increased spending on high-speed rail projects and alternative energy, but the attempt to trim the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade by freezing various spending programs at current levels without reforming social programs like Medicare hasn't impressed anyone. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) finds the plan too timid, as does House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). And Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell couldn't resist a jab at Obama's plans for spending money on rail transit and clean energy as money for "trains and windmills," as if they were toys. In McConnell's home state of Kentucky, where almost no one uses any kind of public transit and where the economy depends on coal mining, trains and windmills probably are thought of as toys.

Yes, yes, you say, Obama's domestic spending cuts are all too bad, but he has to prioritize his own goals and make concessions to the Republicans who control the House to get anything done. Yeah, how's that working out so far? I'd rather see Obama act like Harry Truman and fight the opposition to the bitter end, as Truman did against the Republican Eightieth Congress of 1947 and 1948. Chris Matthews suggested that possibility once, and Pat Buchanan replied with a stinging rejoinder. "Chris," Buchanan said of Obama, "do you see any of Harry Truman in this guy?"

Buchanan has a point. I don't even see any of Harry Reid in this guy.

So, we won't get much in the way of high-speed rail spending, we won't get any clean energy programs, and we'll get even more draconian domestic spending cuts when the negotiations are completed between the White House and Congress and the smoke clears.

Three weeks ago, Obama spoke of a Sputnik moment. This budget is our Kaputnik moment.

In that spirit, to sum up our national predicament, I present a video clip of the failed Vanguard TV3 "Kaputnik" satellite launch of December 6, 1957.