Teflon

Freedom? of? the? Press?

Robert J. Samuelson, economist-journalist, writing an article entitled "Original Sin Remembered" in the Washington Post for Wednesday June 3, 1992 says all the budget problems of the 1990's can be blamed on John F. Kennedy.

Back in the 1960's, Jack Kennedy, it seems, gave a speech saying it was all right to cut taxes and run a little deficit. From this speech at Yale Samuelson concludes that the inflation and runaway budget deficits evolved. The reason: Kennedy listened to a bunch of economists and that's what led the country astray. Samuelson said, "Kennedy's speech was in some ways the original sin. It ditched the prevailing orthodoxies and left the country rudderless, committed to desirable goals without the means to reach them." Samuelson goes on to say that Kennedy substituted economists for bureaucrats and a little inflation here and a little deficit there (the deficit for 1961 was 3.5 billion) got us used to this style of living so that when supply-side economics of the Reagan-Bush era came along we were enured, dulled, so to speak, by our addiction to tax cuts and budget deficits so that we merrily went along until the deficits got out of hand.

"Bad ideas, once unleashed, linger in their consequences," Samuelson said. "We have now been practiced on by successive waves of economic sorcerers, each trying to retrieve the unrealistic promises of the 1960's. The overblown rhetoric of Republican supply-siders in the early 1980's strongly resembled that of the Kennedy-Johnson economists." (Walter Heller, economist, who invented revenue sharing must be rotating in his grave like a whirling dervish, Ed.) "We partially eradicated high inflation, but only by enduring the severe 1981-82 recession. And now we are toying with a dubious scheme to codify—through a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget—political norms that commanded widespread public respect in the 1950's. Such is history's revenge," says Samuelson, and it's all Jack Kennedy's fault.

The era of Jack Kennedy was a time of the rising expectation of the American people. Incomes were rising ahead of inflation, business was picking up and, more importantly, tax revenues were increasing so much so that Federal budget surpluses posed a major problem of the time. Kennedy's Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon was explaining, at the time, that tax cuts were necessary so that the surpluses would not end up in the Treasury, but would remain in the hands of business and individuals who could use them to produce further revenue. Dillon stated that there would be more tax cuts over the years as the GNP, which was growing at 8% per annum, would increase even further producing even more revenue.

Surpluses in the neighborhood of 20 billion dollars were the problem. That would be a surplus of 100 billion in todays Federal budget. This was the "problem" Kennedy's economic sorcerers were struggling with. The bad habit we were about to develop was to run the country with budget surpluses that had to be reduced by lowering taxes and instituting revenue sharing. The not so original sin of Jack Kennedy was that he was putting the nation in the black and was going to use the power of the Federal Government to help ordinary people.

Ordinary people were being empowered. This was the time of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the black community was rising to its feet. The country was in turmoil as the old ways were being discarded and the new ways were being introduced. Things, like blacks riding on the back of the bus, were going. Segregation in public accommodations was going; school segregation was going. Jack Kennedy's sin was that he was upsetting the status quo.

It would be after Kennedy's death that the country, under Johnson, would get a new Voting Rights Act, a new Civil Rights Act, and an Economic Opportunity Act.

The time in question for Mr. Samuelson was when Kennedy announced that we would put a man on the moon, electrifying the nation with the vision of man in space. It was a generation of heroes the likes of which the nation had never seen in peace time. Exploits that rivaled the most heroic performed in war times were carried out in peace time and witnessed by millions of us on our televisions. We were there when that small step for man, but a giant step for mankind, was taken.

John Kennedy's sin—(not original sin as that was to tell a lie: "What you doing, Adam?" asks God. "Nuthin," says Adam)— his ordinary sin was to be ahead of his time. He paid for that sin. He was assassinated, so was his brother Robert, as was Martin Luther King, Jr. These men were giants, leaders of the nation showing the way to new heights of government responsibility and capability to improve the lives of ordinary people. To this day they have not been replaced. No one has yet to step forward to fill these vacant shoes; the nation still needs their replacements and is waiting for them. Martin Luther King Jr. was the one and only leader of the black community in America.

What has Samuelson left out of his recounting of Kennedy's "original sin?" He left out the Vietnam War, the war that nobody can explain. Why did we lose 59,000 young men and women? One thing about Vietnam is for sure: It took care of the surpluses. Samuelson left out Watergate, Irangate, the S&L scandal, the October Surprise, the BCCI scandal, the record number of people dismissed from government and prosecuted for wrong-doing in the Reagan Administration that gave currency to the word "sleaze." He left out the fact that an informal conspiracy among the magnates of the communication industry produced the teflon coat that Reagan wore and Bush now wears.

Samuelson left out the stupidity of our Lebanon experience, where hundreds of American lives were lost through negligence while the Commander-in-Chief said, "Not to worry, it's my fault." He left out Grenada, where a small Cuban labor battalion embarrassed an 8000-man invasion force, most of whom were later decorated by the Army. He left out the Persian Gulf War where it seems that President Bush suckered his old buddy Saddam Hussein into war. To enhance his reelection?

Samuelson left out the fact that the estimates used to increase the defense budget, were "cooked" and that at the time Reagan decreased taxes to get the government off our backs, he increased spending, intentionally producing the budget deficits. Then there is the question of where the money went. The answer: into the pockets of the very rich, the 1/2 of 1% of our population who accumulated 70% of the new wealth of the 80's. While the poor get poorer and more numerous, while many of the middle class fall into the lower class because of structural unemployment, while the middle class has its taxes increased and loses money over the 80's, the 1/2 of 1% at the top of our economic scale, the group from which the magnates come, own a whopping 29.1% of the nations's wealth. A small percentage of a large number is a large number; a large percentage of a large number is a whopper. The country was looted through the tax code, defense procurement, and the S&L scandal, and it was all Jack Kennedy's fault. If he had only not given that speech!

Well, here we are in the 1990's with grown men saying "Not us." George Bush blames the Los Angeles riots on Lyndon Johnson and Robert J. Samuelson blames our horrendous budget deficits on John F. Kennedy. Samuelson's mother should wash his mouth out with soap.

...Ted Sudia...

Dedicatory Remarks
by the
President of the United States

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a Great Civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here, gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have so far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

...A. Lincoln...
Gettysburg, PA
November 19, 1863

See the Atlantic, June 1992 for an article: The Words That Remade America, by Garry Wills. Ed.

© Copyright 1992
Institute for domestic Tranquility