ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610210075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE STAFF WRITER
VOTERS SAY THEY'RE WORRIED about taxes and spending, and both parties say they agree the nation must balance its budget. So why doesn't it happen?
Late on an October Monday, deep into a year of history-making deadlock, America's senators cast a vote that never matter to anyone but themselves.
The topic seemed worthy: Should wealthy people be excluded if Congress cuts taxes? When the final tally came, it made a poignant election-year statement: Republicans want to cut taxes even for the rich; Democrats don't.
But the tax vote meant nothing. The real purpose of the legislation on the floor was whether to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and this bid to add an extraneous amendment to deal with taxes was defeated. However, today's campaign brochures say that anyone who voted "nay" that day was pandering to the wealthy financiers.
"Clearly, we were hoping to make a statement," one Democrat said.
"Shameless demagoguery," was the official Republican response.
The federal government works that way sometimes, and the average American hates it.
"It makes me angry when I see politicians put everything in terms of what's going to get them the vote," said Alice Mountjoy, a community activist in Norfolk who participated in one of a series of round-table discussions The Roanoke Times and its sister paper in Norfolk, The Virginian-Pilot, held with voters this summer.
"They're trying to put a wedge into everything and polarize people. We don't want to be polarized; we want to work together.''
Representatives can stall a proposed law for weeks with amendments, counter-motions and threats to unrelated bills. Senators can delay a vote indefinitely if they have the support, burning off hours reading "War and Peace" into the official record.
The country's method of making laws spawns much cynicism and indignation among voters, according to a poll conducted for the newspapers this summer.
And that's just the way America's Founding Fathers planned it.
"They didn't trust government any more than people do today," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said. "They wanted to hamper government, to slow it down."
That doesn't mean the people like it.
When the Roanoke and Norfolk newspapers polled 672 Virginia voters this summer, frustration with the political system was a dominant theme. People worried more about job security, crime, education or the integrity of elected leaders, but often because they think Washington is too tangled in money and egos to solve any problems.
The hand-wringing sprouted mostly from worries about the federal budget. Even when politicians agree - on issues such as balancing the budget and offering a tax break - the ideas often get mired in fights over details.
And for all the government's inability to control spending and reduce the federal debt - a promise politicians have been making for at least two decades - their priorities are not always too far apart. For instance:
* Both Democrats and Republicans say they want to balance the federal budget by 2002.
* Both parties want to cut Medicare growth by $100 billion or more - both, in fact, say it's necessary to keep the system from certain collapse.
* Both parties say they want to cut taxes, mostly for the middle class.
* Both parties tout some simplification of the income-tax system, though proposals vary widely.
* In Virginia, both U.S. Senate candidates, Republican John Warner and Democrat Mark Warner, want a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
That America's leaders can't accomplish even the budget goals on which they agree is a concern not lost on the two Warners.
"I don't want my daughters to carry the enormous debt created by my generation, but Washington seems unable to bring it under control," said Mark Warner, the challenger.
"Like all taxpayers, I am incurring the cost of our Congress and citizens being unwilling to reach a consensus on spending priorities," said John Warner, the incumbent.
And yet the politicians - and their parties - are responsible for much of the government's budgetary shortcoming.
Medicare spending is an example. With Medicare growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, Democrats and Republicans alike acknowledge the system will soon be bankrupt.
Yet when the Republicans proposed reducing Medicare growth by $270 billion, Democratic campaign literature across the country screamed that the GOP didn't care about the elderly. The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, says the system will someday have to be cut even more.
The Democrats' gripe isn't just with health care, but with the Republicans' desire to cut taxes at the same time. Money wouldn't technically come from one to pay for the other, but the proximity smacks of reckless insensitivity, the Democrats say.
The candidates waste few compliments on themselves in explaining why the issues so tie them in knots.
Though all of it makes for election-year rhetoric, the disagreements often go beyond simple partisan electioneering to a bullheaded clash of ideological principles. Republicans won't support anything that smells like the decay of individual responsibility, for instance. Democrats reject the supply-side argument that tax cuts can cure our economic woes, and they feel no need to be fair to every tax bracket when they see the needs of the poorest at stake.
And for that, the voters - not just the people they elect - have to share some of the responsibility.
Said Sabato: "When the people elect a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, they're guaranteeing gridlock to some degree. It's what they asked for."
LENGTH: Long : 125 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ``We are not a bottomless pit down here. Peopleby CNBcannot keep paying more than they've got left to live on. We've got
to meet all these overblown services of the government, but if they
would just leave us something to live on, for God's sake. Get out of
my pocket and get out of my life.'' - Arnie St. Clair, Hardy. 2.
``The United States has one of the lowest deficits per GNP in
the developed nations of the world. I view the deficit as not a
burden but sort
of a necessity of maintaining certain government programs.'' - Paul
Caldwell, Blacksburg: ``I'm not an economist. I don't know at what
point the national debt will actually cause us to balance on the
edge of disaster, but I'm uneasy about it. I've been uneasy for some
time. I think we should come to grips with
it: Either we're going to raise taxes, or cut spending.'' - Bill
Blackwell, Blacksburg: ``There is something radically wrong. Why are
my tax dollars going to foreign aid when we don't have the money for
child care for those families that are working? Why are my tax
dollars going every place but in places they
need them desperately, and most of all in education?'' - Norma
Smith, Roanoke. color. Graphic Chart: What concerns Virginias.
KEYWORDS: MGR POLITICS CONGRESS