William G. Horter – 10/25/06

This page was last updated on October 25, 2006.

Hart is far from independent; William G. Horter; Beaver County Times; October 25, 2006.

Another Republican bashing exercise by Mr. Horter of the same quality as his previous letters.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“In one of her ads, U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart says she has been an ‘independent voice’ in Washington.

“Nothing could be farther from the truth. She has doggedly followed in the footsteps of Santorum and Bush, voting to go to this war, voting to help create the huge new debt and talking up the privatization of Social Security, which is simply a scam by Wall Street.”

[RWC] Gee, it couldn’t be Rep. Hart shares the same views as President Bush and Sen. Santorum on most issues, could it? After all, don’t people join a party because they share common positions? What are the odds Mr. Horter ever wrote a letter complaining that elected Democrats tend to vote alike?

Regarding “the privatization of Social Security,” that’s BS and Mr. Horter knows it. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by Rep. Hart was originally proposed by Democrats in the late 1990s and by the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security in 2001. One of the Commisssion cochairmen was former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) and he supported the proposal. No one ever questioned Moynihan’s liberal credentials.

“I spoke before about the intelligence failures of Hart and Santorum in their dogged support of Bush’s failed policies in Iraq, but they have also displayed those same intelligence failures in domestic tax policies, which so far have squandered any legacy that Clinton left with his balanced budgets.”

[RWC] Here’s my critique of Mr. Horter’s letter entitled “Failures of intelligence.”

Regarding the Clinton balanced budgets, Mr. Horter “forgot” to mention a few items. First, the surpluses were already dropping during Clinton’s last year in office. Second, though I’m not blaming him for it, Bill Clinton left President Bush an economy in recession. On top of that we had further economic downturn as a result of the Enron-type scandals (which occurred during the Clinton administration) and 9/11. An economy in recession generates less tax revenue and so the budget would have gone into deficit even if tax rates had not been cut. Third, you can’t balance a budget via tax increases, especially during a recession. Tax increases exacerbate recessions while tax cuts encourage recovery from a recession. This is not theory; it works every time it’s tried.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t like budget deficits. However, the idea that leaving tax rates as they were or raising them would have staved off a deficit is demonstrably wrong.

“I hardly think I need tell about the war in Iraq, but both of our lawmakers follow Bush’s lead here, too, and that is simply staying the failed course. It has been said that insanity is simply to keep doing over and over what doesn’t work.”

[RWC] Here’s my critique of Mr. Horter’s letter entitled “The straight facts on Iraq.”

Regarding his comment about insanity, it goes more like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We’ve been engaged in the “war on poverty” for about 40 years without victory, but I haven’t seen any letters from Mr. Horter telling us we should “redploy.”

“These two have failed the mission you sent them on. It’s about time we tried a different course. We need a change in Washington. It’s almost time to vote. Think about it.”

[RWC] Mr. Horter continues the trend I identified weeks ago. To date, not a single Hart- and/or Santorum-bashing letter has told us why we should vote for their opponents. In fact, Mr. Horter doesn’t even mention their names.