Senators Obama and Clinton May Win Votes In Their Rhetorical Race to the Bottom, But At What Cost?

While Senators Obama and Clinton continue to scratch, claw and bloody each other like Soviet and Hungarian waterpolo players at the 1956 Olympics, they are racing to the bottom in their dangerously anti-free market rhetoric.  By shamelessly attacking everything from tax cuts to free trade agreements to entrepreneurial prosperity itself, Obama and Clinton may succeed in obtaining Democratic primary votes. 

But at what cost to American well-being and economic literacy? 

First, Senator Obama.  When asked during a debate with Senator Clinton whether he intended to impose "tax increases on millions of Americans," Senator Obama enthusiastically affirmed, saying, "I'm not bashful about it."  The fact that he doesn't even feel the need to conceal his intent to raise taxes, as wiser liberal candidates have done in the past, should itself alarm American voters about what may lie in store.  Although he claims to target only "the rich" for tax increases, higher penalties on capital gains and dividends will hit everyday Americans very hard, including retirees who depend upon such income to survive. 

Walter Mondale famously admitted his intent to raise Americans' taxes during his 1984 campaign against Ronald Reagan, and he rightfully paid a heavy price for doing so.  Perhaps Senator Obama believes that times have changed. 

Continuing his silly economic rhetoric, Senator Obama falsely claims that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has made "millions of jobs disappear."  Further, he ridiculously proclaimed that Nafta has forced "parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart."  

The facts show quite the opposite, as Nafta and other free trade agreements have increased American jobs and prosperity, not diminished them.  By stating the contrary, Senator Obama is either exposing his own dishonesty or incompetence to hold the nation's highest elected office.  Either way, he should be ashamed of himself for descending into such false rhetoric, and he certainly isn't living up to his self-professed "post-partisan" persona. 

Beneath its spellbinding veneer, Senator Obama's agenda is merely the same old, discredited liberal economic agenda of higher taxes, more spending, and bigger government.  This month alone, he has proposed $800 billion in new spending programs, including such things as $150 billion on a "green-energy plan," $25 billion in foreign assistance, $60 billion in an "infrastructure investment bank," $65 billion in expanded health insurance spending and $340 billion in tax giveaways. 

Under this dangerous economic agenda, Americans would pay a heavy price in terms of prosperity, innovation and international competitiveness. 

Senator Clinton's rhetoric has been no less shameless, and there is very little sunlight between Senator Obama's substantive agenda and her own.  First, she echoed Senator Obama's enthusiasm for raising taxes by saying that she "absolutely, absolutely" favored tax increases. 

Further, she matched Senator Obama in terms of mendacity, stating that "it is wrong that an investment money manager in Wall Street making $50 million a year gets a lower tax rate than a teacher, a nurse, a truck driver, and autoworker making $50,000 a year."  With former candidate John Edwards now out of the race, perhaps this dishonest tactic merely aims to poach his title of angry populist. 

Then, in her desperate attempt to remain competitive in Wisconsin last week, she ludicrously interjected herself into the proposed merger between Delta and Northwest Airlines.  Despite the fact that this consolidation between two private actors in an ailing industry could create a much healthier carrier, Senator Clinton brazenly asserted, "we will have to take a hard look at the potential effects."  She also admonished that any proposed merger preserve "jobs and worker protections," as if her role was that of Airline Merger Czar. 

These economic principles advanced by Senators Obama and Clinton have been tested extensively in Western Europe, which explains why America has prospered just as those nations' economies have stagnated.  In contrast, nations in Eastern Europe and Asia have cut taxes, deregulated and opened their markets, consequently boosting their own prosperity.

This is a simple lesson, but Obama and Clinton discard it in favor of wooing primary votes via their crude anti-growth rhetoric.  In an era of increased global competition, America cannot afford to reward such bombast.