Maybe Bill Clinton really believed that the numbers in his economic plan would add up. Or maybe he was exercising the political campaigner's God-given right to fudge and exaggerate. Either way, those days are gone. Now that he's President-elect, his relatively pain-free prescriptions face a stark reality as they make the transition from promise to practice.
Probably Clinton's most dubious budget idea is his proposal to squeeze foreign companies doing business in the U.S. for $45 billion in taxes over four years. He would rely on that measure to provide nearly one-third of all the new taxes he will need to...