Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103250226
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CABELL BRAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now, with an 80-percent approval rating, President Bush can do anything this country needs. And we need a lot. The "New World Order" requires that this adminstration lead our people to understand the issues and the problems we will face in the next generation - not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, all the Third World, and particularly at home.
The population of the world will double by the year 2030, to 12 billion. Ninety-five percent of this growth will be in the Third World. How will these people live? Where will they work? How will we deal globally with the environmental pressures? On the positive side, how can we take advantage of the enormous global marketplace?
No one has all the answers, but a fundamental question for discussion is a clear definition of what is the public reponsibility and the role of the private sector, internationally and domestically. And we can attack our basic problems at home, to have the strongest possible society, politically, socially and economically.
Unlike Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mexico and many other countries, we have the resources in the United States to solve our major problems. We know how to do it, but we have had neither the will nor the national leadership to. Unless we solve our domestic problems, we cannot be a model to the struggling societies of either the Third World or Eastern Europe.
The future holds enormous opportunities as well as problems. Global economic activity, the world's gross national product, will more than double with a doubling of the population. There will be enough work to do. Our people must be trained to do it.
President Bush should lead this process, start a national dialogue, identify basic issues, accelerate proven programs - and forget his previous "no new tax" policy.
The practical approach is to start small, bringing together all available current resources at local levels to focus on the 25 percent of the American people who do not participate in the American way of life.
Fourteen percent of Americans fall below the poverty line. Another 12 percent have no health insurance. Most of those adults work, but don't earn enough money to support themselves and their families. Yet this reservoir of people must provide about 40 percent of the work force in the next generation.
After 26 years in dealing with these problems as president of Total Action Against Poverty, and as chairman currently of the state Board of Health, I suggest that the Community Services Block Grant program be tripled. Turn loose the energy of the 960 community-action Agencies in America, of which TAP is one.
This would be a modest expenditure, from $325 million nationally to about $1 billion. TAP has 36 local initiatives, all focused on helping those in poverty become self-supporting citizens. Yet TAP only has enough funds to serve one-fourth of the poor in any of these programs.
Triple the Head Start plan, so all 3- and 4-year-old children in the United States can have this education and health-care experience.
Rebuild the economic infrastructure: Improving roads, bridges, air travel, education facilities and so forth would stimulate needed employment in this recession, and prepare us for the economic and business opportunities of the next generation.
Raise the revenues to pay for these programs, reduce our federal deficit and strengthen our currency. Innovative techniques for doing this include:
Paying for the savings-and-loan debacle by temporarily charging $1 per share of public stock traded in America, so the investment-banking community, which helped cause this problem, can pay for it. This can raise more than $250 million a day.
Stabilizing the price of oil at $28 a barrel with a major flexible import-duty, both to encourage domestic and Western Hemisphere production and to use market forces to reduce the fossil-fuel burning that threatens the environment.
Adding a 5-percent value-added tax - that is, a national sales tax. Allocate 25 percent of the revenues to the new federal programs to educate, train, house and provide health care to the 25 percent of the population who will pay more than their share from such a consumer tax. But this badly needed revenue would help pull these people out of poverty, and be self-supporting.
Adding an income surtax on people with adjusted net annual income of over $200,000, until the federal budget is balanced.
Encouraging states and all participants in our health-care system to restructure health-service delivery, to give emphasis to prevention and primary care. Insist as a first step that prenatal care be available to all women, and comprehensive health care to all children up to age 7.
We do not need national health insurance if structural changes are made. We have enough money now in health-care delivery to pay for health care for all our people if the system were restructured.
Developing federal tax credits for individuals and corporations similar to the Virginia Neighborhood Assistance Act, which encourages citizen and corporate involvement in such proven programs at the local level as community-action agencies, community-development corporations and far-reaching health-care initiatives.
Raising these additional revenues will cut consumption and slow business. But we can adjust to a 10-percent consumption cut, especially since it helps to protect our finite resources as we face increasing environmental pressures.
The president should inspire the nation to adopt a social bill of rights, guaranteeing each citizen a life without hunger or homelessness, and a life with at least 12 years of education, with access to health care, especially for mothers and young children, and with safe, affordable drinking water for all.
America should assume global environmental leadership with clean air, access to clean water, waste management, protection of biological diversity, comprehensive energy policies and land management.
National, state and local-government support for our art institutions and our artists would help strengthen our society culturally. Innovative private-public partnerships - encouraging matching funds with federal tax credits, and other revenue-generating plans - should be developed.
Mr. President, capitalize on your public support to build and implement a comprehensive domestic agenda that will be an inspiration and model for all countries.
You may not be able to do all of this. But start the process. Let America show the world that after a war is won, peace can be implemented in a way that provides hope and opportunity with a new, enlarged meaning for life itself.
by CNB