11/02/00 5:35 p.m.
Post-Halloween Tale of Terror
Speaker Gephardt!

By Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth & NR contributing editor

he odds of the GOP holding the House seem to be improving with each passing day. But what if they don't? A Speaker Gephardt scenario would be unquestionably bearish for stocks and the economy. We'd also be looking at a potential murderer's row of anti-business left-wingers with gavels in their hands — ranging from Charlie Rangel heading the Ways and Means Committee to John Dingell back in charge at Commerce.

For the past six years we've had an extremely benign pro-growth political environment of Bill Clinton in the White House and the Republican majorities in Congress preventing him from screwing things up. It's been six years of productive gridlock. But a Speaker Gephardt scenario could disrupt all this.

Gephardt is the unrivaled leader of the Left in the House. He had a perfect 100 percent rating from the AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), America's largest public-employee union. By contrast, Gephardt received a 0 (zero) rating from the conservative National Federation of Independent Businesses, the nation's leading small-business lobbying organization. National Journal gave him a 79 for liberal votes on economic policy (the highest possible score for the 105th Congress) and a 0 (zero) for conservative votes. He led the protectionist squad against NAFTA and opposed free trade with China-though not aggressively. He says that Americans who are rich have "won the lottery of life."

A Republican Congress has been kind to investor-class Americans. In the six years since Republicans took control of Congress in November 1994, the stock market has tripled in value. Interest rates have fallen by 130 basis points. The unemployment rate has fallen by 2 percentage points.

Clearly the more radicalized agenda of the Democratic House members could roil financial markets. A Gore-Gephardt scenario would be most unsettling of all. I still expect the GOP to narrowly hold the House, but Republicans should be warning voters of the bearish alternative.