But then we saw a tax hikes that led to budget surpluses.
Tsongas would probably have a decent enough time on the deficit. The Kasich-Penny Plan put forward in 1993 would be an easy thing to get behind, and Tsongas would be pretty in-line with HW's anti-deficit measures. Lots of consistency across administrations and across party lines on what to do about the deficit.
Meanwhile Gingrich would probably be trying to lead some kind of revolt against this, just like he screwed over HW OTL. And the left-flank of the democrats would also be apoplectic.
Dude, this guy talked about gasoline tax.
Fun stuff. I imagine the GOP would make a big deal of this. Does the GOP push cap-and-trade in response?
Interesting. What would be the impact of this?
Less economic chaos in the USSR for one. I'm guessing it'd include IMF loans and a lot of debt forgiveness for the Russians. Tsongas also understood in a way that many OTL liberals didn't that the Russia sufficient organization infrastructure in its transition to capitalism, and that simple stuff like loans and food aid would be insufficient. He wanted to send western businessmen and other experts to the former eastern bloc to assist in the development of capitalist institutions. I have the relevant excerpt from A Call to Economic arms quoted at the bottom of this post.
ICould such plan have been passed ITTL?
And how about German-style national insurance?
National insurance seems broad-reaching and expensive, no? If there's health reform by Tsongas I think it'd be something incremental.
Tsongas was more pro-business but actually less neoliberal than Clinton. Sounds weird, right? His overall economic plan was very mercantilist and dirigisme, like post-war Japan, France and Germany. This is very different from Thatcherite/Reaganite laissez-faire neoliberalism.
It isn't that weird. Libertarian/Neoliberal economists and advocates tend to emphasize there being a difference between being pro-business and pro-market. Going all the way back to Adam Smith, the idea was that it's business that tends to most promote undermining free markets. Economic Liberalism emerged in opposition to Mercantilism, and it was only the rise of Socialism that sort of papered over the differences in the 20th Century.
One thing that fascinates me about Tsongas is that by the mid-90s he felt that there was a need for a third centrist party in the United States.
- I can imagine him bringing this sort of mindset with him into the White House, except his focus would be on transforming the Democratic Party into representing his vision of a Centrist and Socially Liberal Party. He might provoke the Casey-crats even more than than Bill Clinton did. He's going to provoke the New Dealer types as well. I can see the 1996 primary being messy. Maybe Casey or Kennedy runs against Tsongas's successor.
- He specifically felt that somebody like Colin Powell ought to run in 1996. Powell probably would get a prominent position in a Tsongas administration despite being a Republican.
Also, the 1994 Midterms are going to be different here. Perot voters OTL broke for the GOP pretty significantly. TTL I don't see that happening since Tsongas plays to their economic protectionism a bit (via mercantilism) and to the matter of balanced budgets.
It is essential here to understand two fundamental points.
First, a Soviet Union in transition will always pose a certain danger to
us but that danger is not the risk of advancing Warsaw Pact armies
preceding a carefully planned nuclear attack. It is the danger of an
unstable leadership which happens to be well armed. It is the danger,
not of miscalculation, but unbalanced desperation. As long as nuclear
weapons exist in such vast numbers they cannot be allowed to drift from
our consciousness.
Second, it is in everyone's interest to make the Soviet
transition as smooth as possible. The less the economic chaos, the less
will be the risk of political extremism. The Western nations must help
demonstrate to the Soviet people that there is a light at the end of the
democratic tunnel. Economic deprivation makes freedom less relevant to
a people. We must ensure that economic hope is not extinguished within
the minds of the Soviet citizenry.
This means a coalition of North American, EEC and Pacific Rim
nations meeting at an economic summit with the Soviets (and the East
Europeans) and hammering out Marshall Plan II. This will be a Marshall
Plan not to contain communism but to keep it in its grave (the hard
view) or to enable a long suffering people to enjoy the fruits of
freedom at long last (the benign view). Instead of arraying our forces
of war against the East, let us demonstrate the genius of democracy by
unleashing the true generosity inherent in free nations. This
generosity will involve the usual forms of assistance but it must
include as well the transfer of knowledge. The task here is to bring
Page 51
into being the organizational infrastructure necessary for economic
reforms to succeed. This is not just a matter of letters of credit or
food aid. It is fundamentally a matter of providing skills and
experience and management. These are human talents that can only be
transferred by other human beings. It obviously involves the deployment
of various Western corporate and academic entities. But it also means
Western experts such as retired business executives and consultants on
leave devoting themselves to the great task of the 1990's and beyond -
the full integration of the former Warsaw Pact into the commonwealth of
nations. Such an integration will also enable us to have a greater
capability to influence the outcome of the independence movements in the
republics.