One thing the Clinton administration always could be counted on was making very realistic - in fact TOO conservative - revenue and expenditure forecasts. Gene Lyons tells us w hat Mr. Daniels is up to:

Last week, the administration was forced to admit that the U.S. budget is now $165 billion in the hole, 60 percent worse than it predicted. Budget director Mitch Daniels also distributed a dandy Enron-style chart duly reproduced on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette front page. It showed deficits
morphing magically into surpluses in 2005--that is, after the next presidential election.

For that to happen, Daniels forecast corporate profits rising a preposterous 70 percent, government expenditures shrinking even as the White House presses for sharp increases, and tax revenues rising 25 percent just as the costliest of Bush's save-the-billionaires tax cuts kick in. Oh yeah, and a runaway bull market on Wall Street. There's a better chance of the fun-loving Bush twins,Jenna and Barbara, entering a convent.



He also reminds us of the good old days...


Kerrey's vote brought the U.S. Senate to a 50-50 tie, enabling Vice President Al Gore to cast the decisive vote. The Clinton plan passed without a single Republican vote amid GOP predictions of disaster. Newt Gingrich said the tax increase would cause "a job killing recession." Rep. Robert Michel of Illinois called it "a silent, greedy destroyer of family budgets, a dreadful virus in the economic bloodstream of our nation."

Instead, the exact opposite happened. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin summed it all up in the Washington Post on July 19: "Unemployment fell from over 7 percent to 4 percent and was under 5 percent for 40 consecutive months; private investment in productive equipment grew at double-digit rates for eight years; annual productivity growth more than doubled by the end of the period; inflation was low; GDP growth averaged roughly 4 percent per annum, and 20 million new private-sector jobs were created." Budget deficits vanished, surpluses appeared, and prosperity spread.