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Hillary - maybe not so bad
Why the panic of Hillary becoming President? As Democrats go she is not so bad. She is a far cry from Kerry. She is in the DLC camp.
The Democrats
Hillary's American dream
Jul 27th 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
Making globalisation less scary with cushions and ladders
IF YOU say something no one could disagree with, you are probably wasting carbon dioxide. Why then, did Hillary Clinton bother to reveal this week that she is for “performance-based governing, not photo-ops; hope and fairness, not fear and favouritism”? Because she is a politician, obviously. But also because the Democrats have been trying to sound constructive this week, giving Bush-bashing a rest and floating a fleet of new policy ideas. Mrs Clinton's speech to the Democratic Leadership Council's “national conversation” on July 24th in Denver, Colorado, included hardly any direct attacks on Republicans—only the innuendo that the president favours nasty things like fear and photo-opportunities.
But the speech had substance, too. The DLC recently produced a book on security policy, arguing, roughly speaking, that Islamist terrorism is as big a threat as George Bush says it is, but needs to be fought more intelligently. This week came the domestic-policy sequel: “The American Dream Initiative”. The promise of America, said Mrs Clinton, is that if you work hard, you and your children can succeed. But the middle class is squeezed between sluggish pay rises and the soaring costs of health care, college and petrol.
Globalisation, although it makes the world richer, causes economic insecurity. Workers worldwide are worried that someone, somewhere can do their job for less. Americans, despite low unemployment, are especially nervous because losing their job can mean losing their family's health insurance. This is one reason why the Democratic Party's core supporters are reflexively hostile to free trade.
Mrs Clinton and the DLC represent the party's centrist wing: tough on national defence, liberal (in the European sense) on trade and distrusted by the left. “The American Dream Initiative” is an attempt to make globalisation sound less scary by supplying cushions and ladders. The cushions include more tax breaks for home-ownership, a free $500 bond for all new babies (an idea copied from Britain) and a subsidy for retirement savings. Small employers burdened with health-care costs would be able to use a nationwide “purchasing pool” for insurance. The ladders include more subsidies for college and a proposal for longer school hours.
All this will cost money. Mrs Clinton promised to find savings by curbing tax-breaks for rich businesses and axing 100,000 unnecessary consultants, though she wisely refrained from naming any potential victims besides Halliburton. At the same time, she promised to restore the fiscal discipline that has slipped so dangerously under Mr Bush. Democrats, she said, would restore the “pay-as-you-go” budget rules that, until 2002, obliged Congress to match any spending increase with a cut elsewhere or a tax rise.
The next day, in Washington, DC, another group of centrist Democrats called the Hamilton Project offered a complementary set of proposals. One gem: a young wonk named Austan Goolsbee suggested that 40% of American taxpayers should be exempted from filling in their own tax returns because the Internal Revenue Service already knows what they earn, having demanded records from their employers and banks. This, he said, would save $44 billion in compliance costs over ten years. It would be good for family values, he argued, since people would be able to spend 225m more hours with their loved ones instead of wrestling with incomprehensible forms.
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