Republican Position on Government Deficits and Spending

Excerpt from the 1996 Republican Platform

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Here is the Republican party position on government spending, the national debt, and the need to balance the federal budget.

This text is especially useful because it invokes quite a few parts of the public philosophy that I call general-welfare or pragmatic liberalism.

Balancing the Budget and Reducing Spending

"We didn't dig ourselves into a $5 trillion debt because the American people are undertaxed. We got that $5 trillion debt because government overspends." "The budget deficit is a 'stealth tax' that pushes up interest rates and costs the typical family $36,000 on an average home mortgage, $1,400 on an ordinary student loan, and $700 on a car loan." Bob Dole

Raising tax rates is the wrong way to balance the budget. It enables the Clinton tax addicts to wastefully spend the public's money. Republicans support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, phased in over a short period and with appr opriate safeguards for national emergencies. We passed it in the House of Representatives, but Bill Clinton and his allies - especially the Senate's somersault six, who switched their long-standing position on the issue - blocked it by a single vote. As president, Bob Dole will lead the fight for that amendment, and in the States, Republicans will finish the fight for its speedy ratification. Once and for all, we declare:

A president should be Commander-in-Chief in the nation's budget battle as well as in military conflicts. Bill Clinton has been AWOL - Absent Without Leadership. Congressional Republicans had to fight his Senate allies for over a year just to giv e him a line-item veto for appropriation bills. Instead of helping us strengthen the presidency in this way, he set an historic precedent: vetoing whole appropriation bills because they spent too little money! His vetoes essentially shut down much of th e government.

We make this promise: A Republican president will veto money bills that spend too much, not too little, and will use the line-item veto to lead the charge against wasteful spending. A Republican president will build on the achievements of our Rep ublican Congress which has cut spending in excess of $53 billion over the last two years.

The Clinton Administration's tactic of using irresponsible monetary policy to hide the effects of their bad fiscal policies leads to:

This is not only bad economics; it is a hidden tax against both income and savings. We pledge a non-political monetary policy to keep prices stable and maintain public confidence in the value of the dollar.

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H. T. Reynolds
htr@udel.edu

Copyright © 1997 H. T. Reynolds
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