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

DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994                   TAG: 9405030006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE TRUTH ABOUT DEFICITS . . .

THE NATIONAL debt - continuing to grow faster than the national economy, as it has each year since 1980 - has swelled to $4.5 trillion. While federal deficits are projected to drop from $255 billion last year to $228 billion this year and $178 billion next year, they are projected by the same methodology to go back up to more than $300 billion by the year 2004.

How well is America facing these facts?

One indication: When U.S. Sen. Charles Robb suggests he might support tax increases if Congress proves unable to cut popular programs, it's generally regarded not as a statement of common sense but as an act of political courage. Sadly, if recent history is any guide, that assessment is accurate.

For example, President Clinton's budget-reduction efforts last year were significant and helpful, but even they didn't go far enough. Yet the loudest criticism from the public was that they went too far - whether in the (failed) proposal to raise grazing fees on public lands to market rates; the cutbacks in defense spending; the recapture of some Social Security expenditures via a rise in the taxable portion of benefits to non-poor recipients; or the gas-tax increase reduced by Congress to so modest an amount (less than a nickle a gallon) as to be unnoticeable.

The deficit-reduction issue tends to get boiled down to the old tax-spend argument: Should expenditures be contained or revenues raised? But the argument is sterile when it does not go beyond abstractions, as it seldom does. Without offering realistic specifics, it's irresponsible to call for spending constraints alone as the means to reduce the deficit - and if you can't do that, it's irresponsible not to call for higher taxes.

Nor should deficit reduction always be a matter of Democrat vs. Republican. It can be bipartisan; indeed, probably must be if it is to happen.

These points are at the heart of the message of the Concord Coalition, an organization begun by former Sens. Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican, and Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat. They were reinforced the other day in Roanoke with the announcement of a Roanoke-Salem chapter co-chaired by the respected former 6th District Congressmen James Olin, a Democrat, and Caldwell Butler, a Republican.

The Concord Coalition proposes both specific cuts - including reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits to people earning more than $40,000, and raising the Social Security retirement age to 68 - and specific tax increases. Among them: a 50-cent rise in the gas tax, which Robb has also called for (in another example of political courage).

The proposals are good illustrations of two points. First, genuine efforts to cut the debt would be painful on both sides of the accounts ledger. Second, genuine budget-balancing would hit middle-class America the hardest, because middle-class America is where there's money to be taxed and entitlement spending to be cut.

Rudman and Tsongas, and Butler and Olin, were all conscientious lawmakers who retired from Congress, voluntarily, with their self-respect and personal reputations intact. Still, it's worth noting that they identify with the Concord Coalition's proposals as former legislators. More urgently needed on board the deficit-cutting boat are current ones, such as Robb.

So give Olin and Butler credit for their important, bipartisan gesture. And give Robb his due. He's having his personal-reputation problems in this election year. But in his willingness to speak budget truth, put him ahead of most of the rest. And may the Concord Coalition inspire others to catch up.

by CNB