While it's true that Bill Clinton lowered taxes - which led directly to the boom in the latter years of his administration - he did so only because he was forced to by Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" campaign, which gave Republicans the majority in both the House and the Senate.

Clinton, faced with those majorities, agreed to the cuts. Let's not even mention Jimmy Carter, who understood economics about as well as he understood America - which is not at all.

Comes now Barack Obama, as liberal as any person to ever seek the presidency. Compared with Mr. Obama, LBJ looks like a moderate, and JFK a flaming right-winger.

And then there's welfare, which is what at bottom is Mr. Obama's ...

While it's true that Bill Clinton lowered taxes - which led directly to the boom in the latter years of his administration - he did so only because he was forced to by Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" campaign, which gave Republicans the majority in both the House and the Senate.

Clinton, faced with those majorities, agreed to the cuts. Let's not even mention Jimmy Carter, who understood economics about as well as he understood America - which is not at all.

Comes now Barack Obama, as liberal as any person to ever seek the presidency. Compared with Mr. Obama, LBJ looks like a moderate, and JFK a flaming right-winger.

And then there's welfare, which is what at bottom is Mr. Obama's plan for taxation. While he claims he would cut taxes for "95 percent" of American taxpayers, more than 40 percent of Americans don't pay taxes now. How will he "cut" their taxes? By sending them a "rebate" check.

That's what he meant when he said he'd like to spread the wealth to Joe the Plumber.

Which gets us back to Mr. Laffer. The other day, Mr. Laffer appeared on one of the Talking Heads television shows (we forget which one; at this point they're all running together), and, asked what was wrong with Mr. Obama's economic plan, said, "If you tax people who work, and give it to people who don't, pretty soon you're going to have an awful lot of people who don't work." No kidding.

Estimates are that if all of Mr. Obama's programs are enacted - national health care, revisions in Social Security, expanded Medicaid elegability, etc., etc., etc., the total cost would be $4.3 trillion. Trillion! Can the American economy, and American taxpayers, afford it? Of course not.