Lean to the left... more. No, much more...

Feature Will 2010 Be Another 1994? By Grover Norquist from the March 2010 issue Election day, November 2, 2010, will either confirm the Democratic triumphs of 2006 and 2008, ushering in a renewed period of Democratic dominance and jerking America left as happened in the 1930s and 1960s, or it will echo the 1994 rejection of the leftward drift of united Democratic government under Clinton. When Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928, there were Republican majorities in both the Senate (48-46) and the House of Representatives (238-194). Hoover endorsed protectionism, increased the top tax rate from 25 percent to 75 percent, expanded state spending, and responded to the collapse of the stock market on October 29, 1929, with subsidies, bailouts, wage and price controls, and tax and spending hikes. When he left office in 1933 the Democrats held a 59 to 36 majority in the Senate and a 313 to 117 majority in the House. Democrats would use their supermajorities that reached a high of 76 senators and 334 congressmen in 1936 to change labor law, bringing the number of workers forced to pay union dues from 3.4 million in 1930 (11.6 percent of the workforce) to 14.3 million in 1950 (31.5 percent of the workforce), create the unfunded Social Security system, expand federal government employment to 2.6 million, and increase federal spending from 6.9 percent of the economy to 19.4 percent by 1952. When Eisenhower was elected in 1952 Democrats held the House (235-199) and Senate (49-47). With Eisenhower's victory the Republicans won a majority in the House (221-213) and Senate (49-47). Ike vetoed the tax cut passed by the newly minted Republican Congress, maintained the top tax rate at 90 percent, and left office in 1961 with Democrats controlling the Senate (64-36) and the House (263-174). The 1964 LBJ election provided the supermajorities that created Medicare, Medicaid, and HUD and saw Congress come within a whisker of repealing state right-to-work laws. Federal spending on domestic programs grew from 11.3 percent of GDP in 1970 to 16.8 percent in 1980. On the day George W. Bush was elected, Republicans commanded a 55-45 majority in the Senate and a majority of 228-206 in the House. Bush saw federal spending increase from 18.4 percent of GDP to 21 percent, raised the unfunded liability of Medicare from $7.0 to $13.5 trillion, took on the task of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and passed only temporary tax cuts that all expire on or before January 2011. When Bush left office, he bequeathed America a President Barack Obama with 70 percent approval ratings and a Senate with 59 Democrats and a House with a 257-178 Democratic majority. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi moved quickly to use their majorities to ratchet up the size and scope of the state with a $787 billion "stimulus" and a second tranche of TARP spending of $350 billion. They tried to enact a cap and trade energy bill that would put all energy under federal control, "health care reform" legislation that would put 16 percent of GDP under federal control, and change labor laws to take away the silly requirement that workers vote before being forced into paying union dues. Exactly one year after Obama, Reid, and Pelosi came together in power, they had increased the publicly held federal debt from $5.8 trillion to $7.6 trillion and increased the projected spending for the next 10 years by $1 trillion. The unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare now stands at $22.3 trillion and rising. This deliberate explosion of debt and spending is designed to force permanent tax increases. Their ultimate goal is to impose a Value Added Tax (VAT) on top of higher income taxes. But Congress has failed to enact the three changes in law that would permanently alter the balance of power: rewriting labor law, nationalizing energy, and nationalizing health care. How, why, did the Democrats fail to capitalize on their supermajorities in 2009? What did the Republicans do correctly, and will 2010, both in Congress and on Election Day, stop Democratic plans in their tracks or confirm a continued but perhaps slower march to statism? IT WASN'T SUPPOSED to turn out this way ... read more.