Bush v. Bush v. Clinton

National Review, Oct 19, 1992

GEORGE BUSH'S political fortunes reached their present pass because for four years he has been dogged by a tenacious enemy who has been undermining his achievements at every turn. Not Bill Clinton, of course, but George Bush.

There has been good in the Bush record. Conservative unhappiness with him takes its keenness from the fact that he gave promise of being better--promise that was at times fulfilled. George Bush nominated, and stuck by, Clarence Thomas--an act of courage, and of political prescience. Desert Storm freed Kuwait, and contained Saddam's ambitions. Mr. Bush has pushed for more open markets in the Uruguay round of GATT and in the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has been staunch on abortion and judicial appointments.

We will not rehearse again all the failures of the Bush years. But we cannot outline the choice before the American people without first considering the central economic blunders which have produced, first, a stubborn recession and, second, Mr. Bush's present political straits. According to a persuasive analysis by Robert Genetski and Associates of Chicago, the regulatory burden of the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act amounted to a tax of $70 billion. The 1990 budget deal represented another $33.2 billion in actual taxes. When you add on the last four years of increased Social Security and Medicare taxes, and the costs to corporations due to changes in depreciation mandated by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, you get a total burden of almost $230 billion. The President's advisors, concludes Genetski, "unknowingly saddled him and the economy with President Carter's economic .program." And so with President Carter's economic results.

But Mr. Genetski also offers some good news: in 1993, for the first time in many years, there are no new tax or regulatory burdens scheduled. So the costs, although heavy, will not increase over what they were in 1992. As the economy absorbs them, therefore, productivity and living standards should gradually improve. And this is so even if, as seems aH too likely, a victorious Mr. Bush fails to get any tax or regulatory cuts through a hostile CongresS. The economic outlook is very different for a Clinton Presidency. President Clinton would repeal almost none of our present burdens and add many more. He wants a middle-income tax cut of $20 billion. But that would be more than offset by a pay-or-play health plan that would saddle business with benefits costing between $110 and $124 billion; by mandated worker training set-asides costing another $15 to $30 billion; and by direct income- and business-tax increases amounting to $31 billion. Since President Clinton would be working with a Democratic Congress which has been advocating such programs for years, he would probably get what he wants--and quickly. The resulting $150-billion-odd tax and regulatory hike would be, according to Mr. Genetski, "the largest one-year tax increase in history"--a record broken at shorter and shorter intervals.

So the economic consequences of President Bush, though bad, have already been endured, while those of President Clinton are yet to come and would be worse. This economic argument is the strongest case with most voters for supporting Mr. Bush. Ironically, it is an argument that the Bush-Quayle campaign cannot make.