Poor families like Marion's are falling apart. Children are abandoned. With most federal spending programs constrained by Clinton's own five-year deficit reduction plan, the White House has less and less direct control over the economy. The President is gambling, instead, that deficit reduction will keep interest rates down, giving businesses and consumers an incentive to spend and invest. That strategy has paid off handsomely for the administration so far.
Few economists see the bogey of inflation or another recession returning anytime soon.
Horrified at policies that favored the rich and punished the poor, O'Neill let it fly. I voted for the Socialist-Workers candidate, a man I had never heard of but whose party affiliation had the requisite shock appeal. My father gasped, and then reached into his shirt pocket and handed me another pencil, eraser end first. He said nothing. To everyone else, he is a smear artist with a right-wing agenda.