THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 25, 1995 TAG: 9501250018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
According to David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's first budget director, the Reagan revolution was done in by the triumph of politics. A Washington dominated by vested interests, special interests, pork swapping and business as usual welcomed a defense buildup and tax cuts but drew the line at downsizing.
When President Clinton took power, nothing had changed. Consider the apparently doomed effort by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to bring fees for Western land use more in line with reality by doubling them. The Gingrich revolutionaries should take heed, turning talk into action may not be so easy.
The federal government owns vast acreage in the West - 270 million acres of grazing land alone. It has traditionally charged far less than the market rate for private parties to graze, to mine, and to cut timber. According to a Washington Post report, grazing fees on private land in 11 Western states have increased 32 percent since 1980. Fees on government land have dropped a third.
Critics of the Babbitt initiative claim the government land often is less productive and requires improvements, but the cost differential leaves plenty of room for that. The fee per animal unit month averages $10.03 on private land and just $1.61 on public land. In fact, since Babbitt began to crusade for increased federal fees, they have actually dropped to their lowest point since 1988.
Not only do users of government land get a bargain, they are often poor stewards. Many acres have been ruined by the erosion that overgrazing can exacerbate. Metals extracted are gone forever, and timber cut is often not restored. Farmers with access to public land wind up with a government-subsidized cost advantage over farmers without such access. And additional income from public lands could help the government to reduce the deficit.
So logic is on Babbitt's side, but politics is against him. Now Republicans are in power in Congress and are promising the fulfillment of the Reagan revolution: real government downsizing.
Citizens wishing them well should pay attention as the politics begins, the deals get cut, the promises are compromised. Conservative David Frum, writing in The American Spectator, offers a useful checklist for voters keeping score.
Frum's test of budget-cutting resolve is: ``Never more than '94.'' If Republicans can't actually cut government spending, they ought at least to be able to keep it from growing any larger.
Cutting the poor and politically disenfranchised is easy. Frum says Republicans should heed David Stockman's advice ``to attack weak claims rather than weak claimants.'' If that were done, a lot of the pork to be cut would be that going to the middle class and to corporations.
Frum's list of weak claims from strong claimants includes student loans, rural electrification, the Small Business Administration, transportation demonstration projects, government underwriting of corporate advertising overseas, the World Bank, mandating ethanol fuel to the advantage of Archer Daniels Midland, $150 million in electric-car pork for the Big Three automakers. To them might easily be added Defense Department pork, mortgage deductions for second homes, subsidized flood insurance for vacation properties and on and on.
Action on these and dozens of other programs, grants, loopholes, subsidies, deductions and exemptions will give voters a clue as to whether we are witnessing a real watershed or the triumph of politics one more time. New players, but the same old game. by CNB