Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1993 TAG: 9401150001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Asked how many shirts she had sold in the past few days, a sales clerk tells me ``lots; I've lost count.''
A businesswoman at a nearby store, who hopes someday to work hard enough to be considered ``rich'' by Democratic standards, tells me she voted for President Clinton but now regrets it. ``I believed he was going to lower taxes,'' she says in dismay.
Around the dining table at a bed and breakfast there are people from Oklahoma, New York, California and Texas. Most are young, hard-working and trying to move up the income ladder. None has anything nice to say about President Clinton or the congressional Democrats who squeezed through the tax increase. All believe the delayed spending cuts (if they ever come in 1997) and the increased taxes (which will hit immediately) hurt their chances to acquire a piece of the American dream.
Perhaps in anticipation of bad things to come, the Maine unemployment rate has risen to 8.7 percent, up from 7.9 percent in May. It is the highest state jobless figure in a decade. Gov. John McKernan blames a late-starting tourist season for the increase, but John Coupe, an economics professor at the University of Maine, told the Portland Press Herald, ``There are tourists here. But they aren't spending. You would think he'd pick a better argument than that.'' Coupe said he is ``not optimistic about where we're heading for the next several months.''
The key figure in the distressing Maine economy is the number of seasonally adjusted non-farm wage and salary jobs - it dropped by 4,100 during the year that ended in June. You don't need an economics degree to understand human nature. Businesses were not hiring - and some were laying people off - anticipating a Clinton tax increase that would further damage the economic recovery that was barely under way following the last tax increase in 1990. That single event caused the early ``retirement'' of President Bush, whose residence is no longer the summer White House but a permanent seasonal home.
In his ``victory'' speech after the Senate barely passed the drastically altered and politically mortgaged economic plan, President Clinton said this was just a ``first step.'' That's what a lot of people fear. Hillary is warming up in the bullpen, ready to deliver another curve ball called health-care reform.
Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., correctly characterized the economic measure when he said during debate on the Senate floor that, if implemented with all its proposed ``cuts'' (a highly dubious possibility given the fact that the cuts in the almost identical 1990 budget deal were never made), the bill would merely reduce the increase in the deficit. To some in Congress, a slightly smaller increase in spending means a ``cut.''
The reason President Clinton has declining popular support and enjoys so little trust is because of his poor track record for telling the truth. With his growing list of broken promises, people have a hard time believing him when he says that this time he means it.
A lot of tourists vacationing here don't believe him. Some of them are buying those ``Clinton's Simplified 1040 Form'' T-shirts for just $12.95, plus tax, of course. And they worry that the election slogan ``as Maine goes, so goes the nation'' may have profound and tragic economic consequences in the near future.
\ Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB