ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230083
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
WHAT DOES THE FEDERAL DEFICIT mean to you? Here's how Salem retiree Ferdie Tanner sees it, and what the candidates have to say about it.
Ferdie Tanner says he's had it with all politicians. President Bill Clinton. GOP nominee Bob Dole. "Ross Perot is a helluva guy," says the retired Teamster from Salem, "but he keeps talking in circles."
The same goes for those folks seeking congressional seats. It's not what federal lawmakers have done over the past 30 years, Tanner says, but what they haven't done.
Tanner's big worry is federal spending. Overspending, to get specific.
Oh, sure, he notes, last year's annual deficit was down for the third year in a row - to something like $116 billion. But you call that down?
An even worse problem, says Tanner, 61, is the national debt. That's the sum of all the deficits piled on top of each other over the past 26 years or so. It totals nearly $5 trillion.
Numbers like $116 billion and $5 trillion are difficult for average people to come to grips with. So, instead, consider the national debt as the "mother of all credit card balances."
It's so big you can't afford to pay it down - in fact, you can barely make the interest payments. And year after year you keep charging more - the equivalent of the annual deficit - making the balance grow even higher.
Tanner fears the balance is going to get so big that all of the federal government's revenues eventually will be needed to cover the interest payments. Government either will have to drastically cut its services to afford the payments, or raise taxes very high, or both.
"Right now, if you and I are paying 28 to 29 percent in taxes on average, our grandchildren will be paying between 75 and 82 percent - perhaps by as early as 2010. That's pretty rough on a kid leaving high school and planning to go to college, if more than half of the earnings that they can generate themselves is going to be consumed by taxes," Tanner says.
"It's bound to have an adverse affect on higher education. It puts us into that third-world category that we're trying to lift [other countries] out of."
Not all economists agree, however. The United States, for example, has the lowest ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product of any industrialized nation in the West. That suggests the country is in better fiscal shape than Tanner thinks.
What Tanner wants to know of the 6th District congressional candidates is what specific proposals they have for cutting spending and paying off the accumulated deficits.
Libertarian candidate Jay Rutledge of Roanoke has the most radical solution - but it's also the easiest to understand.
The federal government is by far the largest landowner in the country, Rutledge reasons, so why not auction off that real estate and use the proceeds to pay off the debt?
"Auctioning federal property to eliminate the debt and repealing the income tax to stop the borrowing is the practical, libertarian answer to Ferdie's concerns," Rutledge says.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, thinks a less drastic solution is in order.
"We've got to end these budget deficits that threaten our children's future. That's why I've voted for the balanced-budget amendment and for the line-item veto, which goes into effect on Jan. 1. I also voted for the first actual balanced budget to pass Congress in over a decade," Goodlatte says.
Goodlatte's Democratic opponent, Jeff Grey of Lexington, hasn't offered any specific cuts. Nor does he favor a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Instead, Grey advocates a systemwide analysis of the federal government's operations.
"Every department, bureau and agency should be evaluated for waste, fraud and abuse," he says. "Corporate welfare and tax breaks that encourage our companies to move out of the country should end."
But Tanner wants to hear more specifics.
"If we don't start saving money somewhere along the way, we're just going to spend nickel after nickel until the whole budget's gone again," he says.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB