THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702080041
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 52 lines
Americans have been prone to talk out of both sides of their mouths on the issue of federal spending. One side says: taxes are too high, government spends too much, deficits are a disgrace. The other side says: don't cut my program, don't raise my taxes, don't touch my entitlement.
Now, as President Clinton and congressional Republicans try to craft a budget that eliminates deficits without raising taxes, the impossibility of having it both ways becomes increasingly clear.
Locally, we began to get a taste of the shape of things to come last week when budget details became known.
11,000 fewer Navy positions by 1999.
A fleet down to 335 ships by 1999.
Millions less for Hurricane Protection and Beach Erosion Control.
The chance of no more federal funds to keep Sandbridge from eroding.
And so on.
Area legislators will no doubt contend vigorously on our behalf to preserve funds for programs that are locally important. But so will legislators from 431 other districts, from 49 other states.
Many critics of federal deficits and spending have lived in a dream world where a cure could be had by cutting congressional pay, eliminating foreign aid and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. But those are mere drops in the ocean of federal spending.
Too often politicians have indulged and encouraged such fantasies. They haven't told hard truths and have demagogued on entitlements and demonized their opponents.
In fact, if we're going to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes, we are going to have to make do with less. If at the same time tax cuts are attempted, the squeeze on government programs will be even greater.
We are going to have to accept cuts in services we value - and that includes the armed services and money to which we imagine ourselves entitled. There will be pain.
We have accustomed ourselves to live beyond our means. Adapting to greater austerity won't be easy and won't be pleasant, but it will be necessary. But it must also be equitable. We all have to share the pain. Favorites can't be played or none of us will go along with the program.
That is the task now before Congress and the president, to craft a budget that distributes pain fairly and to do so with a minimum of partisan rancor and hyperbole. It's time for the green eyeshades and candor, not the red flags, hot buttons and sound bites.
Flat spending on defense and less funding for infrastructure are a foretaste of the kinds of difficult realities we are going to have to grapple with for years to come if we are going to begin the next century fiscally sound instead of mortgaged to the hilt. Let the budgeting begin.