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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990                   TAG: 9005100482
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RAISING TAXES

GEORGE BUSH'S lips aren't yet out there to read. But the White House is sending signals that it is willing to talk with Congress about new taxes. For now, the "T" word itself may yet be taboo. Still, says presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, Bush wants "an open debate that is unfettered with conclusions about positions taken in the past."

Good. Those fetters have held both White House and Congress in check for nearly a decade. Ronald Reagan was elected on a tax-cut platform in 1980, fulfilled it and in 1984 - goaded by Democrat Walter Mondale about the deficits - pledged no increase. In 1988 Bush adopted that stand as his own, promising to guard the gates against legislators hungry for more taxpayers' money.

The deficits have proved at least as hungry as Congress. They still exceed $100 billion a year and have defied the goals of the Gramm-Rudman law. The national debt has tripled in the past 10 years, to more than $3 trillion.

Paying only the interest on that debt costs taxpayers $175 billion annually, an outlay that buys them no goods or services. Interest is up from 8.9 percent of the budget to 14.8 percent. Fiscal control has been forfeited, needed government initiatives have been stalled, and the nation's economic future is at stake.

Officials in charge of doing something about this have been staging an elaborate dance around the problem. Bush would have liked the Democrat-controlled Congress to raise taxes for him so he could say "I told you so." Congressional leaders refused to take that first step.

Now the two sides are conferring again. Congress, burned in budget talks with the White House last year, is wary. But Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell says he trusts the president. And everybody benefits from the fact that a couple of Democrats - Sen. Pat Moynihan of New York and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois - already have stuck their necks out.

The fact is that the budget situation is even worse than it looks. Gimmickry such as putting expensive items off-budget and estimating non-existent savings hides the deficit's real size. So does borrowing against the Social Security trust fund. An uneasy public doesn't quite understand all this, but does see that the politicians have engaged in a charade.

White House and Congress should declare a moratorium on trickery - including efforts to maneuver each other into a position to take blame for a tax increase. They should face this together, and jointly ask the people to support their constructive efforts.

The electorate bears ultimate responsibility: In recent years it has penalized straight talk and rewarded those who offered fiscal pie in the sky. Politicians, no dummies, have taken note of that. But they may now be convinced that honesty is the only policy if the mess is to be straightened out.

by CNB