A MILLIONAIRE author of books predicting economic crisis and explaining why government does not work has been nominated to run for president by the Libertarian Party.
Mr Harry Browne (63) was nominated at the party's annual convention, held here during the holiday weekend. He has promised to slash federal spending by 50 per cent the first year and immediately balance the budget.
He hopes to be included in the televised presidential debates in the autumn.
The Libertarians, founded in a Denver living room in 1971 by disaffected Democrats and Republicans, are the third biggest party. They won almost a million votes in the 1980 presidential election, but were overshadowed by Mr Ross Perot's Reform Party in 1992.
Mr Browne, from Franklin, Tennessee, set out his policy positions to an estimated 1,000 delegates. Some of them wore three cornered hats and carried slogans such as there is no government like no government".
He would end any federal role in law enforcement and abolish the FBI end federal income tax and rely on import tariffs to finance central government provide a missile defence for the US but scrap all offensive weapons and overseas bases end social security medicare and medicaid schemes, and let people arrange their own health insurance.
A former Democratic governor.
Mr Richard Lamm, is expected to declare this week that he is seeking the Reform Party's nomination for the presidency against the founder, Mr Perot, who has so far refused to state his intentions. He has said he welcomes other candidates to go before the party convention in August.
Mr Perot appears reluctant to stand again in spite of his good showing in 1992, when he won 19 per cent of the popular vote and helped get Mr Clinton elected by taking votes from president George Bush.
The Federal Election Commission has ruled that, based on that performance, Mr Perot is entitled to $30 million in public matching funds if he runs again. It is not clear if Mr Lamm would qualify for that funding.
Mr Clinton spent time yesterday giving videotaped testimony from the White House in the trial of two Arkansas bankers charged with misuse of funds during his 1990 campaign for governor.
He was called as a witness by one of the defendants, Mr Herbie Branscum, who was appointed a state highway commissioner by then governor Clinton soon after handing over election funds to him. The defence wants to establish that there was no connection between the two events.