Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9410040016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That term, you'll recall, referred to the Reagan-era fiscal program, according to which massive tax cuts and spending increases were supposed to produce a balanced budget. They predictably did not, of course, and the legacy of debt from the '80s continues to burden the nation and constrict its future.
Ah, but tax cuts remain politically appealing, and spending cuts more attractive in the general than the specific.
President Clinton may have reduced the federal debt's political profile when he cut the deficit in his budget plan. At any rate, Republicans sense an opportunity for sweeping gains in the November elections.
Hence their proposed "contract" with America, a package of proposals that the congressional GOP pledges to submit within 100 days in the next session. It is not a serious plan. But, as a piece of political theater, it becomes more dangerous the more effective it proves.
The plan begins boldly, with a balanced budget amendment. It shrinks typically, however, from endorsing any actual spending cuts that might achieve a balanced budget.
It moves on to tax cuts. Most of them - repealing the 1993 tax increase on upper-income Social Security beneficiaries, reducing the capital gains tax, increasing tax-exempt investment income, and raising estate and gift tax exclusions, for example - would tend disproportionately to benefit the better-off. This is not surprising.
Nor is the contrast between the Republicans' tax-cut proposals, which are sharply specific, and the spending cuts they propose to compensate for the lost revenue, which are cynically vague.
Oh, they talk about slashing Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, and the like - in effect exploiting resentment against the poor, shifting yet more resources to the well-off, and transferring more of the human-services burden to the states.
But cuts in "welfare" aside, which provide nowhere near enough savings, the Republicans endorse not a single specific spending reduction, while exempting Social Security and the military from any cuts.
What a deal. We've seen its likes before, smelled the snake oil it's soaking in, suffered some of the consequences. The Republicans offer it again anyway, perhaps assuming that voters are too angry to read the fine print.
by CNB