Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990 TAG: 9003290610
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE F. WILL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland recently told some New Hampshire Democrats that to win, the party needs a "defining economic purpose," such as it has had, whenever it has won, since the days of Andrew Jackson's struggle over the Bank of the United States. The economic purpose about which Americans argue, perennially, is the proper balance of efficiency (growth) and equity (distribution). The purpose can be defined in small details.
Speaking in New Orleans to the moderate-to-conservative Democratic Leadership Council, L. Douglas Wilder, Virginia's new governor, boasted of cutting his state's "regressive sales tax" by exempting non-prescription drugs. And he complained that Virginia has "a $179-million balance" in the federal government's highway trust fund - the state's share of the trust fund being hoarded rather than spent, to mask the federal budget deficit.
Roads, non-prescription drugs - subjects dry as dust, you think? Think again, in light of the growing support for Moynihan's proposal to cut Social Security taxes. The proposal would put the system on a pay-as-you-go basis and deny the government surpluses of $1 billion a week now, $2 billion a week by 1993, $3 billion by 1997 and $4 billion by 2000.
Virginia's Sen. Charles Robb outlined to the DLC the "austerity trap" Democrats are in. Republican strategy is "to use large deficits to stifle public initiative and keep Democrats on the defensive over taxes." Meanwhile, "misuse of Social Security tax revenue keeps the deficit small enough to be manageable and large enough to keep Congress preoccupied with the Gramm-Rudman charade." So public debate is "marginalized" in this atmosphere of "contrived austerity [as] everyone scrambles to protect existing programs - which have vocal constituencies - and to discredit new approaches - which don't."
But as Moynihan said in New Orleans (for the umpteenth time): The deficit is not a circumstance, it is a policy - a deliberate achievement. Moynihan did not say, but could have, that the policy defines the Bush presidency, which is almost all politics, almost no governance. The Bush administration is part of a singleminded strategy to use the Social Security surpluses to rent the White House for Republicans for the rest of the century, and beyond.
One way for Democrats to get off the defensive on taxes is for them to say, over and over and over, what Rep. Bill Gray of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking House Democrat, said in New Orleans: Nine out of 10 families are paying more of their family income in taxes today than they were a decade ago. Another way for Democrats to get off the defensive regarding taxes is to enact Moynihan's tax cut.
In New Orleans, Gray preceded Moynihan who, as is his wont, was brandishing a report from the Bureau of the Census. More dry-as-dust stuff? The report says that it was not until 1988 that median family income finally got back to the 1973 level.
"Never," said Moynihan, "in American history has there been anything like this. Fifteen years. The Depression didn't last 15 years. The panics of the 19th century never did." From 1946, Americans never went even three years without reaching a new high for family income.
Moynihan's measure would end the scandal (as any Democrat should see it) of using a regressive payroll tax to service a deficit, with most interest payments going to wealthy individuals and institutions. The deficit is the basis of the "contrived austerity" that affects Virginia's roads and everything else.
"It was the Republicans," said Sen. Lloyd Bentsen in New Orleans, "who built a mountain of debt so high that it now takes the personal income taxes of every American west of the Mississippi just to pay the interest." Bentsen flinches from Moynihan's proposal because it is unclear what revenues would replace the Social Security surplus stream. Moynihan says that is a good question, but secondary. "First, ask whether this money is legitimately used as general revenue. If you think not, then stop it. Then we will go to the question, How do you replace that revenue? But you won't get to the second question until you ask yourself the first."
More and more Democrats are putting first things first. While the DLC was endorsing the principle of Moynihan's proposal, the Democratic National Committee, meeting in Indianapolis, was endorsing the proposal.
"This weekend," said Sen. Sam Nunn in New Orleans, "we've moved Moynihan from a tactical nuclear weapon to a strategic nuclear weapon." This is going to get interesting. Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB