THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608260640
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: 68 lines
Ross Perot is back and, again, firing blanks. Having made it before, he has the diagnosis down pat (too much national debt) but is shy about mentioning remedies.
Four years ago, Perot dropped in and out of the presidential race without ever putting his brand on proposals to reduce the debt. Getting down to business seemed to rattle him. This time around the Texan implies that his election is the cure and that grubby issues like taxes and spending can be tidied up very quickly by ``task forces'' working thusly:
``We're going to use the computer as our wind tunnel. We'll nail it (presumably a solution), give it to you and then move to the next problem.'' As simple as that!
If an established politician spoke in such outlandish terms, would allowances be made? Of course Bob Dole, in his acceptance speech, pictured the debt as as plague imposed by a bad government upon good people. ``It's your money,'' Dole told us: ``You shouldn't have to apologize for wanting to keep what you earn. To the contrary, the government should apologize for taking too much.''
This is a speech better given before going into debt or after getting out of it. As for now, Dole accurately could have said that it's your money, your government and your debt. During the huge run-up of debt during successive Republican administrations ($1.7 trillion under Reagan and $1.4 trillion under Bush), elections were held regularly, Congress was in session, presidents had their veto powers and alarms about mounting deficits sounded constantly.
One of those alarmed was Dole himself; he sought to shore up revenues by raising taxes. This devotion to paying the bills caused a Republican named Jack Kemp to say: ``Bob Dole never met a tax he didn't hike.''
Dole now acts as if he had it wrong all along. Although the debt's still rising, he's pinned his election hopes to a huge tax reduction and the distinct risk of runaway deficits. The tax cuts in part will pay for themselves through economic growth, he theorizes, and in part will be offset by reduced spending. But entitlements that make up the bulk of government spending are to be spared. Says Dole: ``We're going to balance the budget and cut your taxes without touching Social Security or Medicare, and don't let them scare you.''
It's the Dole scenario, and its warmed-over Reaganism, that's a bit scary. Where are the tens of billions coming from to build the national anti-missile defense system he also promises?
When Dole's close friend Warren Rudman left the Senate, he helped found the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group, which recently offered this view: ``The Dole people will maintain with straight faces from now until November that the necessary (spending) cuts will be anonymous, painless reductions that will not affect you or anyone you know and that will come out of waste, fraud and abuse and excessive administrative costs. People who have been around the budget process know that the easy savings were used in the 1980s.''
There's been some experience with targeting waste, fraud and abuse. Ronald Reagan appointed the Grace Commission which in 1984 advanced 2,478 cost-saving recommendations largely ignored by Reagan and legislative leaders alike, according to commission co-chairman Harry Figgie Jr. As for ``slimming down'' government, as Dole puts it, Reagan promised to do away with two Cabinet departments - Education and Energy. Both are still with us; Education under Reagan enjoyed considerable Republican support.
Dole's demonizing of government is not like him. He is of, by and for government and knows better than most that spending mirrors a mosaic of popular demands. Spending bills do not originate in the bureaucracy. The problem lies in politics, about which Dole said in his speech:
``For too long we have had a leadership that has been unwilling to risk the truth, to speak without calculation, to sacrifice itself.''
No change is foreseen. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB