Cash-happy Clinton buys votes for Gore

[Bill Nalty]

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International News
Electronic Telegraph
Thursday 15 January 1998
Issue 965

Cash-happy Clinton buys votes for Gore

By Hugo Gurdon in Washington

PRESIDENT Clinton is spending tens of billions of dollars in a
pre-election spree that has Democrats cheering and Republicans shaking
their heads in stunned disbelief.

Like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, the President has unveiled
costly new programmes again and again since the New Year, and more are
expected before his State of the Union address on Jan 27.

The sudden spree has several advantages for Mr Clinton. It will throw
Republicans on to the defensive before November's congressional
elections while shoring up the President's relations with Left-wing
Democrats who think he has made too many concessions to the conservative
majority.

Most significantly, it should help Vice-President Al Gore's bid for the
Oval Office in 2000. Mr Gore is delighted, for it stops the leak of
support from old-fashioned, tax-and-spend Democrats, who had
increasingly been rallying behind Congressman Richard Gephardt, who is
expected to be the standard bearer of the Left in the next presidential
election.

However, critics accuse Mr Clinton of a profligacy that will raise taxes
and turn the first budget surplus since 1969 into a one-year wonder.
"Another day, another billion-dollar programme" was the laconic comment
of Senator Phil Gramm, a senior Republican.

With polls showing the public keen on "investment" in education, Mr
Clinton wants to spend an extra $15 billion (£10 billion) on recruiting
and training 100,000 more teachers to reduce class sizes, building
schools, funding assisted places and helping universities to persuade
children not to drop out of school.

Mr Clinton's largesse is throwing into doubt his refrain that "the era
of big government is over". The White House will not say how the
education spending will be funded, but much of the money is expected to
come from an out-of-court settlement with tobacco companies, which are
facing a tidal wave of litigation.

Mr Clinton also wants the starting age for people covered by Medicare
health insurance reduced from 65 to 55. With the Baby Boomer generation
now approaching retirement, Medicare is expected to go bankrupt in 10
years, but Mr Clinton says his plan, which could cost $20 billion (£12
billion) over five years, will be self-financing.

Republicans do not want to lose Baby Boomer votes but hate the Clinton
plan. Congressman Bill Thomas of California said: "Every time Washington
promises something for free, the taxpayers end up footing a bigger
bill."

The biggest financial splash-out of all is an extra $22 billion the
President wants for child care. He said this will be largely in the form
of tax credits for the poor. However, none of the benefits are due to go
to families in which mothers stay at home with children, so it is seen
by conservatives as a tax penalty on traditional family life.

The Clinton spree does not stop there. He wants government training of
computer programmers and a propaganda campaign to glamorise such work,
arguing that one in 10 computer jobs advertised stays unfilled.

Finally, he is considering a rise in the minimum wage from $5.15
(£3.21). But he is not expected to go as far as Senator Edward Kennedy,
the Massachusetts liberal, who wants it raised to $6.65. Taken together,
Mr Clinton's New Year resolutions amount to a tack sharply to the Left.

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