USA Today

The independent counsel investigation into the activities of former Agriculture secretary Mike Espy, which culminated Wednesday in a 39-count indictment, offers insight not only into the corruption of the Clinton Cabinet’s early days, but also into how hard it can be to get to the bottom of these cases.

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View this article at The Weekly Standard

SHORTLY AFTER THE 1996 ELECTION, a triumphant President Clinton met behind closed doors with congressional Democrats, who were, if not surprised, at least disappointed by their failure to retake the House of Representatives. According to news reports, the president told his fellow Democrats that unless they got serious about balancing the budget, they would never recapture the House. American voters would continue to see them as fiscally irresponsible.

Nine months later, with a surging economy serving as midwife, White House and congressional negotiators gave birth to an agreement that would balance the budget by 2002 — much sooner if the economy doesn’t sour in the interim. To each of the parents, the child is not wholly lovely, possessing too many features from the other side of the family: a cigarette tax, a new entitlement for children’s health care, locked-in levels of domestic spending — all things Republicans hate and Democrats love. From the right side come a lower capital-gains tax rate, expanded IRAs, reduced inheritance taxes, and more choices for Medicare. Everyone is beaming about the child tax credit — although Republicans had to get over their initial view of the credit at the low end of the income spectrum as a welfare payment, and Democrats had to give up on ludicrous calculations of income that mystically transformed millions of middle-class American families into “the rich” overnight. So it is that under the tutelage of Bill Clinton, a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate voted to balance the budget at last.

Okay, so, the budget will balance, Wall Street is skyrocketing, families will have more money in their pockets: Now what?

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