Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100059
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL E. TSONGAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Congress, especially most Democrats (and, ironically, Newt Gingrich), does not want entitlements and Social Security to be considered as part of a balanced-budget plan.
Fact: You cannot balance the federal budget without entitlement reform. You particularly cannot do so if you've been pandering to the electorate with promises of a middle-class tax cut, as President Clinton and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and Speaker Gingrich have done. If you throw in the defense budget increases Clinton and Gingrich have advocated, it is impossible.
Why? Look at the arithmetic.
Entitlements are half the federal budget. If you take half the budget off the table, you have to find the savings from the rest.
Defense is now 18 percent. Clinton and the Republicans are dickering over increases, and that would mean we have the current imbalance, plus billions more to deal with.
Interest on the national debt is 17 percent. That, by definition, cannot be cut. Indeed, it will rise.
That leaves the 15 percent called discretionary spending. What to cut: FBI? Federal prisons? Bridge repairs? College loans? Food inspection? Federal Aviation Administration? AIDS research?
Yes, you can cut government spending, but it won't begin to balance the budget because much of what government does has value. We would scream bloody murder if, for example, meat were no longer inspected.
So if the numbers are obvious, why not deal with the major budget category - entitlements? Because our elected leaders prize re-election above a balanced budget. They see entitlements as the third rail of American politics. Touch it and you are dead.
Well, what if we were to means-test Social Security and Medicare so that only the most affluent would be affected. Isn't that fair? Cost-of-living increases would continue for those dependent on them, and most retirees would not see a difference.
This would be fair, but watching the Democrats and Republicans poised to use the Social Security nuclear bomb against each other suggests that fairness is not the criterion. Winning elections is.
The conclusion, therefore, is that all is lost.
Not quite. Sooner or later, the majority of Americans will realize how serious the debt issue is and know that entitlements are a necessary part of the solution. Sooner or later, young people will understand that they will be left with the massive bills that my generation has incurred. Sooner or later, parents and grandparents will be horrified by the legacy of economic chaos they will leave to their loved ones and seek to remedy the situation.
At that point, the politics will change.
At that point, Congress will do what is right for the country and still get re-elected. It's going to happen. I just hope it will be in time.
Paul E. Tsongas, a former Democratic senator from Massachusetts, is co-chairman of the Concord Coalition. He wrote this for Newsday.
- L.A. Times-Washington Post News Service
by CNB