Happy Days Are Here Again

Today, I feel better about the economy. Not that there's been any positive indicators; there haven't. The stock market is still in the tank, consumer confidence is down, and Democrats still intend on solving our economic woes with the fiscal equivalent of Bleeding and Leeches.

No, today I took heart because Barack Obama warned not only that in the coming year our yearly deficit would exceed $1 Trillion, but that it would remain in the One Trillion dollar range "indefinitely".

Shades of Bill Clinton. You know, the economic genius who presided over what Democrats describe as the "longest period of peacetime prosperity in our nation's history" (LPOPPIONH for short), aka, the Clinton presidency. Now, those claims are certainly hyperbolic, and as usual, lacking explanation as to exactly what Bill Clinton and his cohorts did to cause said prosperity, but those are quibbles. We enjoyed prosperity, at least for a time.

Which brings us to the reason I'm so happy. As you may recall, in 1995, two years after Clinton signed into law the "largest tax increase in world history", the economy was tanking and deficits were ratcheting back up, causing Bill Clinton to proclaim that there would be $200 billion dollar deficits "as far as the eye can see". Within a year, the deficits were going back down.

What's the common thread here? Both Clinton and Obama are economic numbskulls; both have no clue what causes the economy to rise or fall; both inflicted massive tax increases (or soon will) on the American people; both then made exactly the same prediction of unending deficits. When Clinton did those things, he promptly lost his party both houses of Congress in 1994, and things started booming once Republicans were running things.

Granted, Obama is getting a jump on things by proclaiming the deficits before he's even president, and he's taken the added precaution of blaming it all on President Bush, but inasmuch as he already has a monster tax increase on the table (his stimulus package), it shouldn't be too long before a Republican resurgence in Congress, and the restoral of our economy.

Hope springs eternal.