Libertarian Clark Seeks Budget Cut, Less Intervention

Saying he represents "a new perspective in American politics," Libertarian presidential candidate Ed Clark last night stressed the need for massive cuts in taxes, spending and the size of the federal budget, and for the adoption of a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Outlining his party's platform before a packed Forum at the Kennedy School, Clark blamed the high rates of unemployment and inflation on President Carter's economic policies of financing government deficits through inflationary increases in the money supply, and said that the administration's proposed budget "offers more of the same."

Clark said that if elected, he would work to balance and drastically reduce the size of the federal budget.

Burden of the Past

Advocating return to a foreign policy of non-interference. Clark called for massive cuts in military spending and "the gradual phasing-out of alliances with Western Europe and Japan."

Clark saved his harshest words of the evening for Ronald Reagan's proposal to increase military spending. Clark said such a plan would be "extremely dangerous" and would produce "an endless arms race that will either bring us to bankruptcy or nuclear war."

Right to Right

"The Libertarian party represents the radical individual rights tradition of Western Liberalism, a point of view that has been dead in American politics for 50 years." Clark said, adding that the changes he advocates are based on the preservation, maintenance and increase of individual liberties.

In addition to his stands on economic and foreign policy issues, Clark reiterated Libertarian party opposition to the draft, big government, government interference in the free market in the form of subsidies and regulation.