ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9704010016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
Taking tax cuts off the table until a balanced-budget agreement can be reached is fiscally and strategically sound.
HOUSE Speaker Newt Gingrich has, it seems, committed the unpardonable sin. He has called for congressional Republicans to set aside proposed tax cuts until a balanced-budget agreement can be achieved.
The embattled speaker (his public-approval rating, says New York Republican Peter King, is ``a few points shy of the Ebola virus'') happens to be right. If you're serious about budget balancing - as America should be, what with Medicare facing serious short-term pressures and Social Security facing long-term difficulties - you don't simultaneously press for tax cuts that make budget-balancing all the harder.
Nevertheless, many conservative Republicans accuse Gingrich of abandoning the GOP agenda and trying to lead them toward the (gasp!) center. Among GOP congressmen critical of the fact that Gingrich has shown some grasp of basic budget arithmetic is, alas, Rep. Robert Goodlatte of Roanoke.
Gingrich's GOP critics would do better to join their 70 or so more moderate colleagues who endorsed Gingrich's call. United, the Republicans could insist that, in return for deferring tax goodies for their constituencies, President Clinton abandon the tax breaks he's championing for his constituencies.
Moreover, packaging tax cuts with budget balancing makes it easier for Democrats to demagogue on middle-class entitlements. That's what happened in 1995, when Democrats charged that the Republicans wanted to mutilate Medicare to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy. Medicare needs reforming in any case, but the Democrats had a point: Tax cuts worsen the problem.
Gingrich once proclaimed that tax cuts were the crown jewels of the Republican program. Maybe. But budget balancing isn't chopped liver. Those now branding Gingrich a traitor to the cause seem not to recognize that putting a balanced budget ahead of tax cuts now is in the long run likelier to achieve both.
LENGTH: Short : 42 linesby CNB