ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 28, 1997 TAG: 9702280089
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT LINDSTROM
THE BALANCED-budget amendment is a sleight-of-mind trick. It distracts public attention with sham debate while dismantling programs that offset the pernicious effects of economic Darwinism.
Some years ago the balancing trick started with dramatic, up-to-the-minute displays of national-debt clocks. The beguiled audience saw ``Your Family's Share... '' and failed to note critical facts:
* Ironically, the benefactors of Reaganomics' profligacy raised the greatest alarm about sudden deficit growth, a direct result of that benighted period's tax reduction and defense-spending increases.
* The national debt is relative to the national economy: If the debt grows 1 percent and the economy grows 2 percent, the debt's effect is offset.
* Our indebtedness, in terms of gross domestic product, is the lowest of the G-7 nations.
The national economy doesn't compare to household economies. What was your family's military budget last year? How much did you spend on infrastructure? How often did you adjust the flow and value of your currency? Your family doesn't have its own currency? No wonder the deficit magicians could fool you.
Do you balance your family budget every year? Every year, do you pay off your mortgage, car loan, your child's college loan?
Congress, the institution that controls or fails to control spending, campaigns for a balanced-budget amendment. Like serial criminals crying, ``Stop me before I kill again!'' our Congress members ask for help to make them reduce spending which, I guess, they would do anyway if they didn't have to spend so much time passing the balanced-budget amendment.
The Constitution is not the tool to manipulate the economy. Look at other amendments: They protect citizens from the majority's tyranny, they certify common rights and privileges without regard to race or rank. Most important, constitutional amendments serve as the basis for court cases, not economics. Do we really want judges responsible for the economy? Should the Supreme Court determine taxes and spending?
Balancing the budget created an illusion intended to hide the dismantling of the government. A balanced budget, evidently, justifies eliminating all government programs that do not directly benefit a self-serving corporatism. Feigning only slight concern, the conjurers cut AIDS research, child nutrition and poverty programs, explaining that the deficit warrants such Draconian measures.
The balanced-budget amendment is an assault on working people and on the poor. As programs supporting the poor fall prey to balancing mania, desperate workers are forced into lower-wage jobs. As wages fall and the number of available workers increases, benefits, bargained working conditions and sufficient salaries for the bottom third of workers disappear like the rabbit in a magician's hat.
In a variant of ``pick a card, any card,'' the balancing tricksters ask us which items to eliminate, while hiding their favored cards deep in the deck. Georgia's Sam Nunn, for example, supports balancing the budget on the backs of the nation's poor only if it does not affect his district's defense contracts.
Please note that balancing the budget never interferes with support for corporate interests. No politician proposes eliminating tax deductions that underwrite special industries. Depletion allowances and tax dodges evidently are powerless in the fight to balance the budget. Ironically, only children, the poor and the aged possess sacrificial magic potent enough to save the nation from penury.
The budget subterfuge prepares Mammon's magicians for attacking the ultimate mainstays of a just society, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. The prospect of retiring baby-boomers overwhelming the economy motivates Machiavellian responses. The Great Balancers divulged their next trick's secret when we saw them saw welfare recipients in half. They will use the same artifice to disassemble Social Security and health programs.
Stage one will be to means-test Social Security and Medicare recipients. In stage two, the Houdinis will demonize those who survive the means test. Earnest-sounding demagogues will say, ``We must stop this culture of dependency on Social Security,'' forgetting that those ``dependents'' contributed to Social Security accounts for their entire careers. Once the elderly join labor and the poor on the margins of the economy, the magicians of the right will clear the stage, retire to the box seats, and watch the rest of us play ``Survival of the Fittest.''
Like all magic, we know the balanced-budget blather is fraud even while we suspend disbelief. We know that it will take years to get an amendment before statehouses for ratification. Campaign-finance reform or a sudden onset of candor could doom ratification. But that probability doesn't scare the magicians because the amendment's illusion will have done its work: We will have been tricked into dismantling programs that mitigate economic disadvantage and support human dignity.
And we likely will wander from the magicians' tent toward our impoverished destinies naively wondering, ``How did they do that?''
Scott Lindstrom teaches in Bedford County.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 linesby CNB