
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 15, 1990                   TAG: 9003152556
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ROSTENKOWSKI

IF DEMOCRATS such as Pat Moynihan and Dan Rostenkowski keep talking, their party may one day have to stop bemoaning the budget-deficit problem and actually do something about it.

Moynihan, the senior New York senator, proposes to stop the Social Security trust fund from building up huge surpluses, which are used to disguise the size of budget deficits. Rostenkowski of Illinois, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has offered a seven-point plan of budget cuts and tax increases aimed at producing a budget surplus by fiscal 1995.

This puts the ball in the White House court, right? Wrong. The Democrats still have it in play - even though the Bush administration, surprisingly, says the Rostenkowski plan may be the basis for budget discussion.

Granted, it's the Reagan-Bush anti-tax policies that took a series of large annual budget deficits and made them monstrous. The federal government ran up more new debt in the eight Reagan years than it did in more than two centuries before him. Bush's budget director, Richard Darman, called last January for the government to be "serious" about cutting the deficit, then submitted a document full of gimmicks and dodges.

Congressional Democrats blasted Darman for inconsistency. But they were notably quiet about alternatives until Moynihan spoke up a couple of weeks ago, then Rostenkowski this past weekend. Nobody's been trampled in the rush to support either man's plan. House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri has severely criticized President Bush's leadership abilities, but he beat a hasty retreat when asked whether Democrats want to raise taxes.

It's past time to say that they do. Given the increasing burden of debt - and the mounting share of federal spending that goes to service the debt-that is the responsible position. Maybe the White House is ready at last to negotiate in good faith on the budget, and will go along with the idea of high taxes. If not, it will be up to Congress and to the party that controls it. Only the legislative body can levy new taxes or raise existing ones.

Certainly it is more difficult for Congress to launch such an initiative. The president is the country's recognized leader and spokesman. He is better positioned than anyone else or any other institution to set the public agenda and argue for it. Congress is fragmented and speaks with many voices, none of which can command attention and national network time the way a president can. And taxes are unpopular; what else is new?

The Democratic Party has been saddled with the image of tax-and-spend; it fears the political backlash of endorsing tax increases. If the White House will not cooperate in bringing fiscal policy into line with reality, the Democrats will have to act. They can and must persuasively make the case that the Republicans have become the borrow-and-spend party, and that in the long run this is ruinous for the country. Telling the public not what it wants to hear, but what it ought to hear, is called leadership. If the White House won't exercise it, somebody else must.

by CNB