While Senate Republicans feverishly sought a way to end the impeachment trial against him, Bill Clinton introduced his massive $1.8 trillion FY 2000 budget reviving the era of big government that he pronounced "dead" just three years ago.
The Senate Impeachment Trial:
- Under the Constitution, only the House of Representatives has the power to impeach. The Senate must then try the president on the charges for which he has been impeached; then, if he is found guilty, remove him from office. Our Senators have no right to circumvent their Constitutional duty.
- Some Republican Senators hope to end the trial with a broad statement that the President is guilty of "intentionally misleading" grand jurors, but not spelling out specific crimes. Others have proposed taking two votes: one to determine if the president is guilty of either or both articles, another to determine if he should be removed from office.
- The House "managers" have waged a valiant effort to present their case, bound by unusual Senate-imposed restrictions, such as a three-witness limit, videotaped depositions (instead of any "live" witnesses on the Senate floor), and a decision that all proceedings must be completed by February 12th. The entire matter must be considered a rush job by any measure.
- "The Senate is micromanaging the impeachment process the way that Lyndon Johnson managed the Vietnam War. He kept it going, but there was no will to winÖ They have trivialized the whole trialÖ Unless God moves the heart of one of the witnesses, the trial is overÖa mockeryÖof what the founding fathers had in mind" (Paul Weyrich, Notable News Now, 2/2/99).
The President's Budget:
- Clinton abandoned past promises to use "100% of budget surpluses to save Social Security first," to use just 62% of this surplus to "shore up" Social Security. Republicans want the surplus to go for a 10% across-the-board tax cut for all Americans.
- Clinton's newly introduced FY 2000 budget includes 81 new taxes and fees that would raise an additional $82 billion during the next 5 years.
- The Clinton budget, 21% of GDP, will fund a plethora of new socialist initiatives. The Wall Street Journal called it "a grab-bag bonanza that can only be explained as an attempt to repay the liberal Democrats in Congress who've stood by Mr. Clinton through scandal and impeachment." The budget is the largest is history (as a percentage of GDP), with the single exception of 1944, at the height of the war against Nazi Germany, Japan and the Axis powers.
- The new budget surplus (all from Social Security tax revenues) will be placed in the federal government's general fund and IOUs will be issued to the Social Security Trust Fund in exchange - this is the same practice that has been going on for decades. However, in this case, the administration will create yet another IOU, equivalent to 62% of the budget surplus, and put it, too, into the Social Security Trust Fund. The same dollars will create two IOUs. More money (as IOUs) will appear in the Trust Fund, but future retiree payments will still remain entirely dependent upon future general revenues being sufficient to cover them. Using creative and deceptive double entries, Clinton has conceived a way to spend even more for his social programs, now, while convincing the American people he is making Social Security stronger. We and our children will pay for Clinton's LIES, LIES & MORE LIES!
Since 1995 when he vetoed Congress' budget, then blamed Republicans for "shutting down the government," Bill Clinton has controlled the process. Republicans have been cowed completely. Unless Republicans now fearlessly stand for principle and the Constitution, Bill Clinton will escape accountability for his perjury and obstruction of justice, and remain unrestrained as he seduces, deceives, abuses and enslaves the American peopleÖa people he and Republicans seemingly consider utter fools.