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Chairman Howard Dean -- Driving the Democrats Further Leftby
John Berthoud Feb 2, 2005 The "Stop Howard Dean" movement in the Democratic Party has apparently
failed, as the former Vermont Governor is now considered a lock to be elected as the next
Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Many party operatives and supporters
were worried that his vocal advocacy of a very left-wing foreign policy will not be smart
politics for a party in desperate need of reclaiming voters in the center. But Dean's
domestic agenda should also worry "New Democrats."
A year ago, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) used our BillTally
program to analyze Presidential candidate Dean's platform for America. We looked at
every policy idea or initiative that the Dean campaign offered and asked the simple
question "how much will all this cost taxpayers?" The startling answer was $222.9
billion in new spending per year ($2.2 trillion over ten years). That figure outstrips by 65
percent the cost of the legislative agenda proposed by Ted Kennedy in NTUF's most
recent study of Congress. It seems pretty clear that when Dean said America couldn't
"afford" President Bush's tax cuts, what he really meant was that Washington
bureaucracies and the spending programs he envisioned couldn't afford the tax cuts.
Some of the specifics of Dean's proposals reveal even more about his political
philosophy. He backed $105 billion in annual increases in government health care
spending. He proposed a two-year $100 billion job creation fund, making it quite clear
how he believes jobs are created in America.
So next week's meeting of the Democratic National Committee's 447 members
will apparently be a coronation of Dean and his ideas for much bigger government. This
is bad news for party centrists and for those who had hoped to steer the Democrats
toward the middle in 2008.
John Berthoud is President of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union & the
National Taxpayers Union Foundation. |
