"Between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2009," she writes, "outlays on regulatory activities, adjusted for inflation, increased from $26.4 billion to an estimated $42.7 billion, or 62 percent. By contrast, President Clinton increased real spending on regulatory activities by 31 percent, from $20.1 billion in 1993 to $26.4 billion in 2001."
De Rugy also points out that, adjusted for inflation, regulatory spending under the category of finance and banking were cut by 3 percent during the Bill Clinton years and rose 29 percent under the imagined Bush deregulation binge.
Clinton and Wild West capitalism. Where are all the tributes to the laissez-faire economic boom of 1991-2000?
Instead, the far left has taken up concerted scare-mongering -- much like what they accuse the right of employing after 9/11 -- to transform a short-term economic crisis into a radical long-term foundational alteration of our economy.
This means ignoring every government intervention that helped cause this recession, from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's monopolizing of the subprime mortgage market to the Federal Reserve-created bubbles to regulations that generate moral hazard.
The solution (you won't be surprised): massive bailouts of rotting companies and unions and a new New Deal stimulus package, which aims to "create" artificial jobs and spread the wealth.
No one can blame Americans for their instinctive embrace of risk aversion. Uncertainty always accompanies a market economy, especially after market capitalism has been undermined by its imaginary champions for the past eight years.
But remember; when folks start telling you a debate is over, it usually is just starting.