Gore’s Economic Plan

After studying Vice President Al Gore’s economic plan, revealed to the public Sept. 6, I was left wondering where the “plan” part was. He gave us his “wish list” but failed to tell us specifically how he would accomplish these very lofty and admirable goals. While calling George W. Bush’s plan a risky and vague “scheme,” he failed to provide the details of his own exceedingly optimistic, government-led agenda, as if just hoping that his own plan will work makes it more realistic.

I guess that’s what we should expect from members of the administration, who can’t explain what they did the last eight years to trigger a recovery that began the year before they took office. Then they told us that, despite spending more money every year, their “disciplined” fiscal policies are what balanced the budget. Gore’s honesty is as lacking as President Clinton’s.

DAVID HALL

El Segundo

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Re Gore’s lockboxes: Will the press ever report the very basic truth that lockboxes to save Social Security and Medicare against an economic downturn are a fiction? The federal government cannot “save” any money. It either spends it, retires debt by buying back its bonds and notes or returns it to the taxpayers. Any other course would reduce the money supply, which is bad if the economy is to continue to grow.

TERRY E. QUINN

Van Nuys

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A friend told me she was voting for Bush because she likes what he’ll do or not do with our money better than what Gore would do. Cliche or not, I think this crystallizes the difference between the two major parties: Republicans think with their pocketbooks, Democrats with their hearts.

HAL ROTHBERG

Woodland Hills

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Republican insiders are now starting to worry about their man, shaken by his recent gaffes, testiness and shows of immaturity (Sept. 8). My guess is that these worriers are the same people who, with seemingly little forethought, long ago set in cement who the Republican nominee would be. Bush guaranteed them Texas’ many electoral votes, he was conservative and, best of all, he would be the payback for his father’s loss to the hated Clinton.

The fact that Dubya apparently only gargled from the fountain of knowledge seemed not to bother the anointers. That he is immature and arrogant mattered little. That he had little political exposure or experience seemed irrelevant.

Bush was their choice. Let the kingmakers live with it as Bush loses handily to Gore in November.

JUDITH R. BIRNBERG

Sherman Oaks