THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610200144
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DECISION '96
As Virginians look forward to the Nov. 5 election, they're thinking a
lot about issues that are important in their lives. Leadership.
Economic security. Education. Crime. National priorities. Each Sunday,
we will hear from candidates and citizens about these issues.
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 122 lines
Late on an October Monday, deep into a year of history-making deadlock, America's senators cast a vote that would never matter to anyone but themselves.
The topic seemed worthy: Should wealthy people be excluded if Congress cuts taxes? When the final tally came, it made a poignant election-year statement: Republicans want to cut taxes even for the rich, and Democrats don't.
But the vote meant nothing. The only real purpose of the legislation was to move the embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The federal budget would not be considered for another week. Today's campaign brochures say that anyone who voted ``nay'' that day was pandering to the wealthy financiers. But Congress could have cut taxes on the wealthy any time it wanted, even if the measure had passed.
``Clearly, we were hoping to make a statement,'' said one Democrat.
``Shameless demagoguery,'' declared the official Republican response.
The federal government works that way sometimes, and the average American hates it.
``It makes me angry when I see politicians put everything in terms of what's going to get them the vote,'' said Alice Mountjoy, a community activist in Norfolk who participated in a group discussion with The Virginian-Pilot. ``They're trying to put a wedge into everything and polarize people. We don't want to be polarized, we want to work together.''
Added Bill Ryan of Norfolk: ``It's the politicians who are keeping the cities apart, it's not the people. You've got political egos and they have to be massaged.''
Representatives can stall a proposed law for weeks with amendments, counter motions and threats to unrelated bills. Senators can delay a vote indefinitely if they have the support, burning off hours reading ``War and Peace'' into the official record.
The country's method of making law spawns much cynicism and indignation among voters, according to a poll conducted by The Virginian-Pilot this summer.
And that's just the way America's founding fathers planned it.
``They didn't trust government any more than people do today,'' said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. ``They wanted to hamper government, to slow it down.''
That doesn't mean the people like it.
When The Virginian-Pilot polled 672 Virginia voters this summer, frustrations with the political system was a dominant theme. People worried more about job security, crime, education or the integrity of elected leaders, but often because they think Washington is too tangled in money and egos to solve any problems.
The hand-wringing sprouted mostly from worries about the federal budget. Even when politicians agree - on issues like balancing the budget and offering a tax break - the ideas so often mire in a fight over the details.
And for all the government's inability to control spending and reduce the federal debt - a promise politicians have been making for at least two decades - their priorities are not always too far apart. For instance:
Both Democrats and Republicans want to balance the federal budget by 2002.
They want to cut Medicare growth by $100 billion or more - both, in fact, say it's necessary to keep the system from certain collapse.
They want to cut taxes, mostly for the middle class.
Both parties tout some simplification of the income tax system, though proposals vary widely.
In Virginia, both U.S. Senate candidates, Republican Sen. John Warner and Democrat Mark Warner, want a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
That America's leaders can't accomplish even those budget goals on which they agree is a concern not lost on Virginia's two Senate candidates.
``I don't want my daughters to carry the enormous debt created by my generation, but Washington seems unable to bring it under control,'' said Mark Warner, the challenger.
``Like all taxpayers, I am incurring the cost of our Congress and citizens being unwilling to reach a consensus on spending priorities,'' said John Warner, the incumbent.
And yet the politicians - and their political parties - are responsible for so much of the government's budgetary shortcoming.
Medicare spending is one example. With Medicare growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, Democrats and Republicans alike acknowledge the system will soon be bankrupt.
Yet when the Republicans proposed reducing Medicare growth by $270 billion, Democratic campaign literature across the country screamed that the GOP didn't care about the elderly. The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, says the system will someday have to be cut even more.
The Democrats' gripe isn't just with health care, though, but with the Republicans' desire to cut taxes at the same time. Money wouldn't technically come from one to pay for the other, but the proximity smacks of reckless insensitivity, they say.
There are other differences: Bill Clinton's federal education spending vs. Bob Dole's support of state responsibility. John Warner's support for private school tax credits vs. Mark Warner's opposition.
The candidates waste few compliments on themselves explaining why the issues so tie them in knots.
``Politicians naturally want to get elected, so they make promises they think the voters want to hear,'' said Mark Warner.
John Warner blames ``a lack of principle and a preference for pandering for votes rather than demonstrating leadership.''
But while all of it makes for election-year rhetoric, the disagreements often go beyond simple partisan electioneering to a bullheaded clash of ideological principles. Republicans won't support anything that smells like the decay of individual responsibility, for instance. Democrats reject the supply-side argument that tax cuts can cure our economic woes, and they feel no need to be fair to every tax bracket when they see the needs of the needy at stake.
And for that, the citizens - not just the people they elect - have to share some of the responsibility.
Said Sabato: ``When the people elect a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, they're guaranteeing gridlock to some degree. It's what they asked for.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
ROBERT D. VOROS/The Virginian-Pilot
WHAT VIRGINIANS THINK
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: ELECTION VIRGINIA U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA
PUBLIC JOURNALISM CONGRESSIONAL RACE VIRGINIA
CANDIDATES ISSUES by CNB