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After President Clinton took a drubbing from voters in the 1994 Congressional election, he realized his policies weren't working. He promptly declared, "The era of big government is over," and he then went about making good on that declaration:
• He reduced spending by a miraculous 3 1/2 percent of GDP.
• He attacked entitlement spending and abolished the ballooning open-ended welfare system.
• He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history.
• He delivered the only four budget surpluses in four decades.
Long ago, Jefferson warned, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” The exceptions to that rule have been few and far between recently, and ought to be celebrated when they occur.
One did this past week with the announcement that supporters of the so-called “Stop On-Line Piracy Act” and the “Protect Intellectual Property Act” have indefinitely postponed their measures after an unprecedented protest across the Internet.
Congressman Tom McClintock will hold a town hall meeting in Truckee on Tuesday, January 10 at 6:00 PM.
The meeting will be held in the Truckee Donner Public Utility District Conference Room, 11570 Donner Pass Road, Truckee.
Viewed in isolation, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 reduces total discretionary spending authority (those expenditures that don’t require statutory changes, including war and emergency spending) from $1.209 trillion in FY 2011 to $1.181 trillion in FY 2012), or $28 billion (2.3 percent). Viewed over the past five years, however, this still constitutes an increase of $144 billion, in discretionary spending (13.5 percent).
This may constitute an improvement over the past year, but begs the question, “Does it put the nation back on the path to fiscal solvency?”