Monday, January 21, 2008

Clinton Touts Government Control of Economy

Hillary Clinton allowed her moderate cover to slip slightly in an interview with the New York Times' David Leonhardt. According to the story, Clinton said that,
if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration.

In one of her most extensive interviews about how she would approach the economy, Mrs. Clinton laid out a view of economic policy that differed in some ways from that of her husband, Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton campaigned on his centrist views, and as president, he championed deficit reduction and trade agreements.

Reflecting what her aides said were very different conditions today, Mrs. Clinton put her emphasis on issues like inequality and the role of institutions like government, rather than market forces, in addressing them.

She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she characterized as often “offensive” and “wrong” and a tax code that had become “so far out of whack” in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class living standards.

Conservatives have long suspected that Hillary would apply more centralized controls to the economy if she were elected and these suspicions are based on Hillary's long-standing support of socalist policies. This interview provides more evidence that we were right. I do not doubt that if she wins in November, Hillary will try to push the United States toward a centralized economy. My only questions is whether or not Congress and the courts have the will-power to actually uphold the COnstitution's limits on the federal government. Based on their performance over the past six years, I sadly conclude that they likely do not.

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