My reaction to President Bill Clinton's slogan, "That's what got us there in the first place" is "nice try." Blaming tax cuts for the rich and President George W. Bush generally for everything else is off the mark. His administration of the Affordable Housing Act of 1977 tells a different story.
The act required banks to lend to people who did not meet established qualification standards for getting mortgage loans. As reported by Thomas Sowell in recent articles, "regardless of the already risky nature of these loans, the Clinton administration pressured lenders to reduce lending standards even more. As a result, many got loans they could not repay. These risky mortgages led to the collapse of the housing market and were shortly followed by the collapse of the economy."
Clinton, although he had a better record as president, was really more responsible for the recession than Bush.
Blaming the economy on "tax cuts for the rich" is also off the mark. Looking at tax revenues for the successive years 2003-2007 in trillions - $1.782; $1.880; $2.153; $2.407; $2.568 - reveals an impressive 44-percent increase in tax revenues since the 2003 tax cuts. Governments fail to realize that when people have more of their own money, they invest it more productively than governments do.
Distorting facts like these and the recent 47-percent story are common as Linda Chavez claimed. "The Mother Jones Magazine story was edited and important sections left out. Romney did not describe the 47 percent as slackers." The writers simply took the headline and built their stories on that.
Under President Barack Obama, we've seen the national debt increase $5 trillion-plus. Obamacare is projected to add considerable debt while putting bureaucrats between doctor and patient. We increasingly are being governed by czars who ignore Congress and make their own value judgments. To think that any man can master all the complexities of the economy and make value judgments better than the free market defies history.
Obama saying he needs four more years of the same un-sustainable spending truly scares me. What we really need is hope, change and management expertise.
Ed Nye,
Upper Sandusky
