ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996 TAG: 9607220138
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
PORK BARREL is like obscenity - difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.
That, anyway, is how it used to be. Lately, with government spending in such ill odor, politicians of both parties have been putting new camouflage on the old practice. When you see pork these days, it can be harder to recognize it for what it is.
The purposes are the same: to lure portions of the electorate whose votes are deemed crucial, or to return the favor to campaign contributors. But the packaging can be different. Sometimes the pork comes wrapped as tax breaks rather than upfront spending.
Thus, in this election year, both President Clinton and congressional Republicans call for a $500 per-child tax credit. Congress passes and Clinton signs a $5,000 tax credit for families that adopt children. Bob Dole endorses a universal $500 tax credit for certain kinds of charitable contributions. Clinton plumps for a $1,500 tax credit for college tuition. Congressional Republicans insist that health-care reform must include provision for a tax-preferred medical savings account. And so on.
Some of the proposals are for worthwhile purposes. But so is much of the old-fashioned pork. That doesn't erase the need, for the former as much as the latter, to measure it against standards of affordability, effectiveness and worthiness relative to competing demands for tax dollars.
Unfortunately, careful scrutiny may be less likely to be applied to the new-style tax breaks than to old-style, straightforward appropriations. After all, goes the argument against looking too closely, tax credits and other preferences simply restore to taxpayers the money that belonged to them in the first place.
That argument overlooks a couple of points. For one, the specialized tax credits being promised this year restore money to some taxpayers, not to taxpayers in general. Do the beneficiaries need the money more than the nonpreferred taxpayers who must, as with any piece of pork, pick up the tab?
Moreover, the prevailing fiscal and demographic circumstances - the growth of federal debt and entitlement spending while Baby Boomers approach retirement - intensify the need to look skeptically at tax-credit proposals. Even if you could fashion an across-the-board tax credit universally regarded as treating all current taxpayers fairly, you almost certainly would be unjustifiably shoving more load onto future taxpayers.
At the very least it should be understood that, with a $1,500 per-student tax credit or a $1,500 per-student spending increase, the effect is the same. The former should be evaluated as critically as the latter would be.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB