Small bad wolf

National Review, August 17, 1992

WASHINGTON'S little political pigs have already forgotten that the 1992 presidential campaign drew forth a Big Bad Wolf who looked very likely to blow their house down. Mr. Perot hulled and puffed up a storm. But, like an inverted Bill Clinton, he never exhaled.

A good thing too, judging by the so-called economic plan subsequently leaked to the media by Perot aides. This depressing document proposes to balance the federal budget by massive tax increases accompanied by sizable but distinctly smaller spending cuts. With exceptions like a gasoline tax, both increases and cuts showed a pronounced redistributive tic. Thus, for example, the "wealthy" were to be deprived of tax shelters like unlimited mortgage-interest deductibility--as well as Social Security cost-of-living payments. And, in a giant step toward fiscal stabilization, business-entertainment deductions were to be reduced. Sounds like Jimmy Carter's jihad against the three-martini lunch? Maybe that's because the Perot plan was largely designed by a Carter budget official, John P. White.

Perot people seem to be actually proud of their work. Indeed, it has received admiring notices from Washington's piglocrat publicists ("serious, honest"--Michael Kinsley, Washington Post). Not surprising. Perotism's function, it now seems dear, would have been to translate voter alienation into a form acceptable to the political establishment. The real economic issue is not the deficit but the government's share of GNP. By showing how to finance so much of it through increased taxes, Perot was clearing the way for further encroachments later.