(FORTUNE Magazine) – It's tempting to let the above headline stand by itself, on an otherwise blank page. Fact is, the Democrats not only don't have an economic plan--they don't even have an outline of one or, it seems, any ideas they feel are worth discussing. They don't, to put it bluntly, have a clue.

In mid-September, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle delivered his party's most withering critique to date of the Bush administration's economic record. In a half-hour-plus stem-winder on the floor of the Senate, he called it, among other things, tragic, deplorable, abysmal, and atrocious. "America," Daschle says, "has seen record job losses, weak economic growth, declining business investment, a failing stock market, shrinking retirement accounts, eroding consumer confidence, rising health-care costs, escalating foreclosures, and vanishing surpluses."

Fair enough. The recovery has been slow and halting, and the latest indicators point at best to mediocre growth for the rest of this year. Business investment still limps, and the stock market continues to suck wind. But like many a pol, Daschle overreaches. "Record job losses," for instance, sound scary, but in fact employment held up remarkably through the 2001 recession. The unemployment rate--recently under 6%--is much lower than it's been after most recessions. The best guess right now is that the recovery will continue, and hopefully strengthen.

But Daschle and his lieutenants are on much thinner ice when they blame the state of the economy on the Bush administration. The latest data show that the economy headed into recession right as Bush took office. And it is pretty obvious to any but the most partisan observer that the administration's single big economic initiative--the tax cuts of 2001--helped prevent the recession from worsening.

Daschle wound up his woeful speech by asking, "What is the President's solution?" Also fair enough. The answer is that the Bush administration is keeping its fingers crossed, hoping that the monetary stimulus provided by the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts, the fiscal stimulus provided by the tax cuts, and increased federal spending will lead to a lasting economic recovery. The administration's only current policy initiatives--making the future tax cuts permanent and possibly enacting new tax cuts for investors--seem to be a pretty low priority.

But Daschle's question raises another question: What policies do he and the Democrats propose to reverse job losses and to boost economic growth, business investment, and the stock market? Daschle gave not a single example. You can search the home pages of Democratic leaders, Senate and House committees, and political action committees, but you'll look in vain. Daschle's sole recommendation? "I call on the administration to work to develop an economic policy that helps the average Americans who are truly suffering." Tough stuff, huh?

There are only three policy channels through which the government affects the economy. First is monetary policy. Do the Democrats favor further and deeper reductions in interest rates by the Federal Reserve? Evidently not.

Next is tax policy. Although the Democrats criticize nothing more vociferously than the Bush tax cuts, they haven't outlined an alternative. Some second-tier Democratic Senators have called for a rollback of the future tax cuts. But none of the party's leaders have gone even that far.

The Democrats have made much of the disappearance of the long-term budget surplus, but they seem to have no ideas about how they might balance the budget, let alone return it to surplus. Even if the Bush tax cuts were repealed, it's unlikely that the budget over the next ten years would return to surplus, according to the latest projections. If the Democrats want to convince anybody that they can hold back the recent tide of fiscal change, they have to articulate a long-term plan to cut massive amounts of federal spending or raise massive amounts of taxes, or both.

The final channel for economic policy is federal spending. Here the Democrats have a few short-term proposals, such as extending unemployment benefits and drought relief, as well as a few longer-term ones, like their generous--and costly--prescription-drug benefit plan for retirees. But none of these would reignite the economy, and all of them would worsen the fiscal picture.

If the Democrats' attempts to make the economy an issue in this fall's midterm elections fall flat, they'll have only themselves to blame. And if they want to make the next presidential election a referendum on each party's economic plans, they'd better start coming up with a few of their own.

ROB NORTON, a former FORTUNE executive editor, is a freelance writer, editor, and consultant in New York City. He can be reached at rob@robnorton.com.