THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 1995 TAG: 9502210011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
The GOP is looking serious about budget cutting. Not just upstarts in the House are getting in the act, but heavyweights in the Senate too.
Bob Dole, the party's front-runner for the 1996 presidential nomination, has said the government will have to spend $225 billion less than now planned on Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years.
Dole has even risked touching the deadly third rail of American politics. ``I also believe we can't keep Social Security off the table forever,'' he said recently. Just talking about whacking Medicare and Social Security risks alienating a crucial Republican constituency, seniors.
Almost as surprising is the stand taken by another GOP presidential hopeful, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana. He's calling for cuts of about a third in the $10 billion annual program of farm subsidies. Lugar wants to eliminate the $3.4 billion over five years that goes to pay for export subsidies. He'd also begin phasing out crop subsidies for a five-year savings of $11.5 billion.
For years critics have complained that the complex web of payments, subsidies and price supports that date to the New Deal are the farthest thing from free enterprise, distort markets and long ago outlived their original purpose. Instead of preventing rural poverty, they now constitute middle-class welfare.
The new majority leader in the House, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, once attacked the entire concept as closet socialism, styling it Moscow on the Mississippi. There's little question that farm programs have turned into expensive subsidies for fat-cat farmers. Those who grow crops not covered by government programs seem to thrive without government jiggering of their markets.
It's time for those living on the agricultural dole to try life on their own, particularly when the GOP is talking about depriving the infant children of impoverished teenage mothers access to government aid. Of course, if these subsidies really are anti-competitive anachronisms, logic recommends their elimination. That makes Lugar's plan to cut them by only a third look like a halfway measure.
But any attack on farm programs carries big political risks for Republicans. Farm states, particularly those west of the Mississippi, have been instrumental in electing Republican presidents. For the courage of their budget-cutting convictions in taking on previously untouchable spending, Dole and Lugar should be commended. They will need that courage as those feeding at the trough organize their counterattack. by CNB