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Show TheSalt Lake Tribune OPINION Monday, January 29, 1996 Government Is Big by Popular Demand ment andfinancial insecurity, and EDWIN YODER the continuing movement of people from independent farms to service-dependent cities. It is popularpolitics to identify big government” as an impos ture thrust upon the people against their will — a temporary THE WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON — President Bill Clinton's State of the Union address — really, a state of the campaign address — involvedfla‘rant thematiclarceny. The most brazen theft of opposition slogans of all was his proclamation that the era of big government is over” — the equivalent of a fat man’s proclamation that he’s fat because the ice cream industry publicfigures we maylooktoif wewant to get beyond cliches and ic payroll here or eliminating a mol New York University fined it in a recent fiscal report Productivity in most sectors has improved dramatically in the thin-man government ; It won't happen. The bigness of big government camefor historical reasons and stays with us by popular demand such as the arts, teaching, law and health care, which require a high Had the president wished to speak bold and prophetic words dardof living, therelative cost of their services must be much high- migrate to the public sector, and spending too much to father of joying its comforts and benefits, the earlysocial safety net; frugal did not spring from a conspiracy presidents such as Harry Truman against the public. It was for the most part arational response to the pains and emergencies of ing bigness and overreachin gov- — ernment while presiding over its three very expensive world wars (counting the Cold War as one of them), a crippling depression with expansion into ever newsectors. The only really original idea about the bloat of government I desperate have encountered lately comes levels modernity and Dwight D. Eisenhower (and yes, even Ronald Reagan) decry- of unemploy- aged to exaggerate the negative influenceof television on society a not inconsiderablefeat level of personal input. For those sential but low-profit industries we all affect to despise while en- and rock 'n’ roll. He’s even man- So it was with special anticipa- working in such jobs to have anything like a contemporary stan- the expansion andcentralization of government: Woodrow Wilson's mobilization for warin 1917 andafter; Franklin D. Roosevelt's belaboring Herbert Hoover for Street. Vietnam, Central America past 200 years, but not in jobs forces that. willy-nilly, compelled conversion from penny pincher maker to be able to make a bad situation seemworsethan it really is. He's done it with Wall Here is the waythe senator de- energy. Or, pare “fraud, waste and abuse” and, presto, you have ern omnicompetent state, which WASHINGTON — It is Oliver Stone's special genius as a film- namedfor William J. Bauof er thanit was in the past. As the price goes up, supply shrinks. Esgovernment is blamed for spend- Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan ignore Social Security, Medicare Medicaid and other big-ticket ing morethan it takes in.” It is the most expensive services, many of them essential — health care for the poor andelderly are prime examples — that tend to become charges upon the taxpayers because productivity tends to bestatic. They are unap- items where most of thebloat is. Understandably. Theseare, after all, the sacred cows the president has recentlyboosted his poll ratings defending So whenthey speak of the end of the era of big government pealing, because unprofitable, en- ravagance Coast Guard? An excess waybridgerepair? terprises for the private market Whenthepresident, the speaker of the House and other great orators of our time speak of the impending demise of big government as weknowit, they strangely what exactly are they talking of the of high- One thinks, again, of the fat man, blaming his girth on diet foods while defending rich desserts to the last puffy breath tion that I went to “Nixon” to see what he'd do with Richard Milhous Nixon, arguably the most ainous president of the past 50 years, as well as oneof the most NEW YORK — couple of months ago — even a couple of weeks ago — evenan idiot could tell that the chances ofa recession in 1996 were about as close to zero as these things get. Now only an idiot would beso sure. If we neededreminding that the housing market is flattening, we got news this week that sales of existing homes declined in De- cember for thethird consecutive month. This was on top of news that sales of new homeshad fallen for the fourth straight month There’s more. Newapplications for unemployment benefits reached their highest level insis months during the week ending Jan, 20. It was a performancenot roll employment, measured by a survey of companies, grew by 151,000, but that weekly hours. a recession morefragile than earlier expect edis not to forecast a recession. Besides, if a recession were about to happen, the Federal Reserve would know about it and Alan Greenspan. its chairman, would worked declined for the second straight month. Andtotal employ ment, measured by a household survey, declined be moving aggressively to prevent There are mildly disturbing signs that consumers areturning it. Or would he? The Fed has, by coincidence squeamish. just released the minutes of its se- As 1995 ended, they were taking on less installment debt and the delinquency rate on credit cards, which reachedits second-highest level in a decade fall, appeared tobestill rising as the year ended. The Federal Reserve's Jan. 17 Beige Book said growth in late 1995 was “general. ly modest.’ in the second-longest expansionperiod since recession was getting started Economists, with an accuracy that so oftenfails them whenlooking forward, can nowdatethat reces- sion from July 1990 Ata Fed meeting Aug. 21, 1990 Greenspan said this: “I think there are several things we can Since the United States is now ary cret meetings heldjust as thelast the Second entirely explained by bad weath- World War, it is now, by purely er, The much-delayed report on historical experience, overdue for stipulate with somedegreeof certainty, namely that those who arguethat weare already in a recession are reasonablycertain to be wrong.” ANGUARD TO DENVER FOR $19 That's right, Vanguard Airlines will fly you to Denver for just $19, one way We've reduced our 14 day advance purchase fare, and through February 7, we'll even waivethat requirement So you can start saving today Now, vou knowall airlines will show you theirbest prices At Vanguard, even if you can’t plan ahead, you'l! never pay morethan $89 to fly us to Denv What other airline can say that? And with our 4 daily nonstops it'll be easy for you to take advantage of this great deal. Of course, our $19 seats arelimited So call yourtravel agent or Vanguardtoday J VANGUARD AIRLINES 355-9800 he reminds us of even as the tells us conclusively that Federal in the same idiotically wooden form of English they use when testifying before Congress We knowthey talk this way in public becauseit is the dutyof the Federal Reserve to mystify about its future intentions. But do us they have to mystify each other? And bythe way, it alsotells us that a man whois supposedly the best-informed economist in the As it turnedout, he couldn't. The Richard Nixon that emerges from “Nixon” is a pa- thetic lush. an “I neverhad a pony when I was a kid” life loser whois seldom without a drink in his hand or a paranoid whineonhis lips. At onepoint, a lowpoint admittedly, the script has Henry Kissinger say of his boss: “Can you imagine what this man might have been if he'd ever been loved? That's a particularly egregious exampleofthe “IfonlyAttila had school ofhistorical analy- In any case, you havetolook at it from Nixon’s mother’s point of view: Howeasycouldit have been to lovea sneaky little kid like Nixon? the White House for the purpose of gathering information to blackmail political enemies. In its cov- er-upphase, it escalated into per: jury, bribery and the laundering of illegally collected political contributions. It was, from the very beginning a full-blown criminal conspiracy American. It was unEnglish. It Whitewater is, at worst, a shady real estate deal undertaken while the Clintons were still backwater politicians And yet, one must remember that Watergate did not achieve the status of a constitutional crisis until Nixonand his henchmenattempted to thwart its investigation by Congress. Which is pre- cisely thecliff the Clintons seem to be edging toward The spontaneous appearance in a secure room in the White Houseliving quarters, of records that congressional investigators had been seeking for the better part of two years confounds even my trusting nature. You haveto wonder what ‘sinister force” is at work in the Clinton White House making things appear and disap pear One of the heavily ironic phrases uttered in the Nixonfilm (which does not lack for heavy famous Alger Hiss casethat made him anational figure. “It's the lic irony) is Nixon's analysis ofthe ness. If you're going to screw around with the facts of a per- even as he prepares his own de makehima little moreinterest ing Stone makes Nixon less inter- struction What then is one to make of the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton herself was a member of the staff son’s life, the least you cando is esting. Actor Anthony Hopkins that gets you.” he tells his aides Nixon is all weakness, with hardly of the Watergate hearings? Sure ly she must have noted that it was a suggestion of the strength that the that the last recession had already started. It would benice to think devastation not once but twice in ofcertaintythat it will Watergate. after all, involved the ation of a burglaryring in about Stone's portrait of Nixonis not its unfaithfulness, but its dull- land hadn't a clue in August 1990 weigh heavilyin the minds of Fed officials when they meet this week to decide whether to cut short-term interest rates. | think wecanstipulate with somedegree that. I'vesaidit myself I suppose what I most object to allowed him to rise from utter that this past miscalculation will I know. | know, Whitewater is not Watergate: everybody says was French really was? Hun” Reserveofficials, when they are behind closed doors and certain that the public won't heartheir words foranotherfiveyears, talk ominously parallel path runout of the Oval Office. To bor: row from Mark Twain: It was un- he'd havebeen akinder, gentler This statement is a shocker. It But to say that the economy is In this case. Watergate if half-baked, filmmaker make even Nixon look worse than he sis employment in December. releasedlast week, showedthat pay- the front page of yourdaily newspaper entertaining. Couldthis brilliant, beentoilet-trained at a later age If a Recession Is Coming, Is the Fed Able to See It? ROBERT RENO NEWSDAY as it is breaking into Whitewater scandal is taking an something called *Baumol’s Dis- about the modernstate, he could have reviewed the historical fashionable political fantasies CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE Moynihan has seized upon ease.” madehim be. But, watch his new (the Republicantalk about aflat tax, for instance), is belied by a century of experience. The mod- DONALD KAUL soundbites to fundamental forces diet This pronouncement, like other Watergate Reincarnated By Stone and by Clinton from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan — as usual, one is tempted to say. The senatoris one of the few nuisancethat can bedisinvented bythinning a padded bureaucratwasteful defense contract there. or disciplining the self-indulgent travel habits of the secretary of AQ his extraordinary career At the heart of the Stone film of course, is the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, illustrating theother cover-up more than the crimes that brought Nixon low How then to explain what she doing now? I still don't think that Whitewater amounts to anything so far as malfeasancegoes. That however, might not be enough t remarkableelement in Stone's ge- save the Clintons. nius: timing. He has an uncanny knack forarriving at an issue just worst of a badsituation given thei Stone-likeinstinct for making the Introducing the fastest compact on the road today. |
