But the problem is not so much with what he says he wants to do so much as it is with
wanting to have the government do it. Some of his stated objectives actually have merit,
but that is only if they are not undertaken by the public sector. Perhaps the scariest
utterance was hoping to provide opportunities for college education to match those we
now have for high school. My first reaction was that he wanted to ruin college education,
too. A great deal of what he offers of evidence of advances are those very things he and
his liberal cohorts have opposed, such as charter schools, school choice, and education
IRA's (except where government made the key determination in them). And removing
control to federal level will do little to help parents be able to impact on what is right or
wrong about their children's education. One can stand silently in terror at the kind of
questions a standardized test students would have to pass which had been prepared by
Clinton's friends would include. Of course, there is to be a competency test for teachers, as
well, and it will not likely be any better. Would Al Gore help prepare the section on the
environment? Maybe Jocelyn Elders can help with some sections of the test. Will the
100,000 new teachers he mentions be like the 100,000 new policemen that aren't on the
beat? Nor must anyone overlook the level of control that government intervention in
education brings with it. Of course, he is clear that the present teaching profession is inept.
After all, it is their doing that requires the millions of volunteers to teach kids how to read.
He offers billions of dollars worth of government projects in the area of education -- this
after just having issued warning as concerns busting the balancing budget he has achieved.
His ten point program is one for a miseducation and dumbing down of America. 

It is time that this 'balanced budget' thing was cleared up, too. There is not a balanced
budget which Clinton has effected. It simply does not exist. Nor has he narrowed the
deficit five years in a row. To the extent that there has been some sensibility brought to the
appropriation process, it has not come from his end of Pennsylvania Avenure. The outcries
about the nonexistent horrific 'cuts' the 'Gingrich that stole Christmas' was legislating are
still fresh in their staleness in my ears. The primary reason that the deficit has begun to
look like it is moving toward balancing is the rising level of social security surplus over the
last few years. And it is what is 'hiding' the deficit spending of Washington. It may even
look like a surplus for a number of years in the early twentyfirst century, and Clinton
clearly has indicated his mind is set on spending that surplus -- apparently, repeatedly. The
decline in the budget deficit has actually tracked fairly closely with the social security
surplus over this time. By the time that the deficits begin to swell as rampaging spending
continues and the social security system reaches insolvency, Clinton will have been long
gone from office by two decades. It can be blamed on someone else then -- or maybe even
on Ronald Reagan!

According to the 1997 Economic Report of the President, the 
supposed deficit of $22 billion
produced an increase in the national debt of almost $190 billion
last year! The virtually 
'balanced' budget this year will add $170 billion to the debt.
Similarly, for 1995, a deficit
of $164 billion added $278 billion and the 1996 $107 billion
deficit pushed the debt up $260 billion.

Following a brief respite concerning trade, couched in terms intended to try to placate big
labor's bosses by nodding toward somehow increasing exports while combating foreign
barriers to trade, and horrific practices overseas of abusive child labor, and forcing his
notions of proper environmental policy on other countries, he turned to proposing another
massive government program to retrain those workers displaced by technology
domestically:

	"We help communities when their military base closes. We ought
	to help them in the same way if their factory closes."

Calling this a 'GI Bill for Workers,' he does not say a word about cost, or about how it
would be run, or why the federal government should do it when its record on similar
retraining programs is far less than stellar. But attaching that name to it catches the
imagination. How could anyone be against it? There is also the matter that it would be the
most economically inefficient and ineffective way of treating this problem. Draining off
investment and consumption to government expenditure will in fact contribute to a
deepening of the problem, causing more need for retraining. It becomes a vicious cycle of
government expansion.

As for the problem of 'abusive child labor' in other countries, there is the general question
as to our right to interfere in the internal affairs of every other country on earth. Why
exactly? And how can anything our regime can do have a greater impact in most situations
than market forces will? In fact, his efforts would probably be intended to contravene
market forces. What we might see as abusive child labor may be anything but that in the
environs it occurs in. We must cease looking at the world through our eyes to the point of
not being able to recognize their peculiar situations. We might do well to consider what
alternative activities these abused children might engage themselves in but for this labor.
They probably would not be going to the university. What impact would the elimination of
this labor have on they and their families living standards? But, no, Clinton says it is
abusive, and therefore it has to be stopped.

It is enough that part of the travails of Asian economies in recent months have been
attributable to the Clinton Administration's economic war on Asia, he gives us an
economics lesson on these customers of ours who if their currencies are devalued too
much will flood our markets will cheap product, but then wants us to renew our
commitment to the IMF, which has been one of the major weapons against world
economic development even more than it has helped it. Of course, he fails to mention that
it is largely the US that controls the IMF, and that the destructive policies it has promoted
are in reality straight off of his desk. He warns that we must do these things to deal with
the situations that have developed in Asia which are going to have impacts here:

	"Preparing for a far-off storm that may reach our shores is far wiser
	than ignoring the thunder until the clouds are overhead."

The reform he seeks is not a prescription for development, but throat-cutting measures of
self-depredation to 'stop global warming' or 'overpopulation' or some other such nonsense.
These will not meet with a welcome reception in other countries, and as a result, they will
only be adopted if we cram them down their throats. Of course, that is precisely what we
have been doing.







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