CLINTONOMICS: MILEPOST ON ROAD TO SERFDOM

Businesses, especially small businesses that fuel America's great engine of job growth, are planning to retrench in the face of President Clinton's tax hikes. In other words, working Americans will have to suffer so that Washington, D.C. doesn't have to. Not only will Washington not share in the suffering; they are actually going on a new spending binge with the money they have just extorted out of productive Americans.

A survey of 400 small business owners conducted by Citizens for a Sound Economy found that 40.6 percent are likely to "lay off some employees as a result of the tax bill being enacted." That means 2.4 million of the 34 million workers employed by small businesses are in danger of losing their jobs.

President Clinton came away from the G-7 meeting in Tokyo a few weeks ago with an agreement to hold a "Jobs Summit" this fall in Washington. Purpose: To delve into why the major industrial countries are not creating more jobs.

He might just as well look to his own policies. Clintonomics is revving up the federal government as a great engine of job destruction.

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Retroactivity

Tonight show comedian Jay Leno had this to say: "They say Clinton's new tax plan is going to create 8.3 million new jobs, which is true. I guess most people are going to have to get a second job just to pay the retroactive taxes."

Speaking of retroactive taxes, not only are some income taxes retroactive to January 1, 19 days before Clinton took office; but so are estate taxes. We're even going to tax the dead retroactively.

Make no mistake: If this is allowed to stand, it will be a milepost on the road to American serfdom a marker future historians will use to identify a crucial moment in the destruction of freedom. Will we let it stand?

Fortunately, a "Repeal Retroactivity" movement is gaining steam, both within Congress and throughout the country. Legal challenges alleging the unconstitutionality of retroactive taxes are being prepared. This form of retroactive taxation is not really taxation of income; it is much closer to outright confiscation of property.

Taxes are retroactive to before Clinton took office; spending "cuts" will take effect after 1996. This led that wicked wit, Senator Bob Dole, to observe that Clinton is "the first President in history to raise taxes before he took office and cut spending after he leaves it."

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Gloom on personal finances

"According to a poll by Albert Sindlinger & Co. the week after the budget deal passed, 70.3 percent of the nearly 1,000 people questioned say they expect their incomes to be lower in the next six months. That's a record that level that tops the 69.3 percent who saw their income declining in a survey the previous week.

"The 69.3 percent reading could also have been influenced by the budget deal, whose ratification looked fairly certain in the week before it was actually voted on.

"Sindlinger, who has been conducting his weekly survey since 1956, says he has never seen Americans gloomier. `Nothing ever like it,' he said. `this is a structural change. This is not a typical business cycle.'

"The 70.3 percent of households predicting a decline in income means that 114 million out of the 163 million households in America expect to be less well off by winter.

"On the job front, 40.3 percent of those questioned expect fewer jobs at their place of employment in six months. Only 29 percent expect their employers to be hiring new workers.

"And 40.5 percent said they expect business conditions in their own community to worsen in the next six months.

"`For the first time, people are referring to Clinton in unmentionable names,' said Sindlinger. `I can't remember any time ... when a president has had such negative ratings.'

"In the survey, Clinton received negative ratings from 52.1 percent of those polled. Only 43.2 percent rated Clinton positively.

"The negative rating is similar to conclusions of other polls. Sindlinger's survey differs because it stresses a family's own finances rather than a person's view of the overall economy, which may reflect nothing other than what a person is reading."

Excerpted from a New York Post column by John Crudele

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Parting thought

When's the last time you chatted with anyone over the back fence, in a coffee shop or a beauty parlor, who told you they were glad they had voted for Bill Clinton, and felt they had gotten what they voted for?