Quarterbacking for Growth

Campus Report ^ | May 5, 2009 | Malcolm A. Kline

[bs9021]

Quarterbacking for Growth

by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 05, 2009

It wasn’t only the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement that lost an elder statesmen with the passing of former Congressman Jack Kemp. Known for the historic tax cuts that bore his name, the former quarterback for the Buffalo Bills also consistently argued that inflating the money supply endangered the nation.

I personally watched him do this 24 years ago. In those days, he would deliver a speech the way that he delivered touchdowns.

“When the coat comes off, look out,” a co-worker warned me before then-Rep. Kemp spoke at the Education and Research Institute’s summer symposium. That day, the coat was off and the dollar bill in his hands as he held it aloft explaining to the room full of college students exactly how worthless inflation of the currency made the money in their pockets.

America desperately needs such lessons now. The Federal Reserve Bank has increased the money supply by about 30 percent in just the past six months.

Jack Kemp deserves to be remembered as much more than a footnote in history. Arguably, the tea parties of 2009 also form part of his legacy.

“If you want to create less of something, tax it,” Kemp used to say. “If you want to create more of something subsidize it.”

As it happens, in the United States, the 1970s were marked by a loss of jobs and the businesses that create them. Conversely, the 1980s saw record private sector job growth and business creation in America as a result of the tax cuts passed by Kemp’s friend and mentor, Ronald Reagan....

[Brookhaven]

And somehow the Republicans managed to nomiate Bob Dole instead of Jack Kemp.

Why do Republicans keep nomnating the worst candidate of the field?