Profiles in Cowardice
By TIMOTHY EGAN
NYT
After the last insult had been spat from the Senate floor, after final passage of a legislative attempt to do something significant in this messy democracy, a leading voice of the opposition made a public prediction:
“People will be hunting Democrats with dogs,” said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas.
This was 1993, in the fragile first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, on a vote to raise taxes for the wealthiest 1.2 percent and cut them for the poor and small businesses. That budget bill passed without a single Republican vote.
What followed was the greatest period of peacetime prosperity in modern times, a budget surplus of $559 billion and a president who left office with an approval rating of 66 percent — the highest of any since World War II. But first, some Democrats were indeed hunted, particularly in the South, which has been cleansing itself of the party since the Civil Rights era.
Gramm went on to deregulate the banking industry, setting the stage for a binge of economic nihilism that nearly brought down the world economy.
(Continued here.)
NYT
After the last insult had been spat from the Senate floor, after final passage of a legislative attempt to do something significant in this messy democracy, a leading voice of the opposition made a public prediction:
“People will be hunting Democrats with dogs,” said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas.
This was 1993, in the fragile first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, on a vote to raise taxes for the wealthiest 1.2 percent and cut them for the poor and small businesses. That budget bill passed without a single Republican vote.
What followed was the greatest period of peacetime prosperity in modern times, a budget surplus of $559 billion and a president who left office with an approval rating of 66 percent — the highest of any since World War II. But first, some Democrats were indeed hunted, particularly in the South, which has been cleansing itself of the party since the Civil Rights era.
Gramm went on to deregulate the banking industry, setting the stage for a binge of economic nihilism that nearly brought down the world economy.
(Continued here.)
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