Got A Grip

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Fred Barnes tells us that Canada, considered an "honorary member of the Third World" not that long ago, "is now in a far better economic situation than the United States" Its unemployment rate is lower, its budget deficit breathtakingly smaller (after nearly a decade of balanced budgets), its debt burden far lighter, its banks more stable. The Canadian dollar, once worth as little as .62 cents, is currently nearly at parity with the American dollar. How did Canada accomplish this turnaround? By practicing what Republicans here only preached: Beginning in the mid-1990s, Canadians came to grips with their fiscal crisis. They cut spending at both the national and provincial (state) level, reduced the size and payroll of government, slashed debt, and produced what Paul Martin, then finance minister and later prime minister, called smaller, smarter government. Barnes points out that the initiative for these measures came from the Liberal governmen when it was in power