THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702240005
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Perry Morgan
LENGTH: 77 lines
Television minister Robert Schuller likes to say that ``God plus me equals a majority'' and ``Nothing great ever happens on the OK level.'' It was Schuller who sent a verse from Isaiah (58:12) to Bill Clinton, who became fixated on it. The president ever since and often has styled himself ``The repairer of the breach.'' Pleased as punch, Schuller told The Washington Post that Clinton has become ``a pastor to the nation.''
That is as may be. But the born-again apostle of a balanced budget in the White House is no repairer of the breach between income and outgo. He's a trimmer who perceives that the notion is more pleasing than the fact of a balanced budget. Unchallenged about that, he proposes an iffy scheme promising balance six years hence with the spending cuts coming after he leaves office. Meantime, he speaks in the present tense of ``my balanced budget.''
Any sentence beginning with those words can end - and often does - with a promise to spend more rather than less. One minute you see him pulling the curtain down over the era of big government; the next minute the curtain's up again, and you never even heard it flapping. He's slick, no doubt about it. Lots of hats. Lots of rabbits. But the audience likes magic, and Republican critics seem to have lost their tongues. They, besides, are trapped in the illogic of having proposed that a nation $5 trillion in debt launch itself on the seas of austerity with a huge tax cut.
Despite that ploy, the Republicans have run risks and paid prices to highlight the danger of runaway spending on entitlement programs that comprise the bulk of federal outlays. Clinton is risk-averse; he's a comforter; while conceding the need to restrain entitlement spending, he proposes to create new programs.
One with a price tag of billions would benefit the education lobbies, which are prime movers and funders in Democratic politics. The goal, through tax breaks and tuition subsidies, is to further stimulate college enrollment now standing at 62 percent of high-school graduates. The number qualified to do college work is another (and depressing) matter; half of those enrolled at four-year colleges graduate and about a third at two-year colleges. These rates reflect severe problems in teaching and learning in elementary and high school. Besides, say many experts, access to college won't be improved by new federal outlays because tuition rates will be raised to absorb them.
As a former governor and college professor, the president surely is aware of all the negative, money-can't-help factors working to retard learning. His secretary of education, Richard Riley, can be blunt about schools badly run and teachers poorly trained. Even so, Clinton may believe the totality of his education proposals offers a measure of leadership that justifies presenting himself as a crusader in the cause. But his is not the language of leadership. He does not speak of a changed world in which teaching no longer is the best opportunity for the brightest, and he says nothing about the merits and demerits of teacher-training schools.
The language of politics-as-usual is money. Clinton would give it as tax breaks to the parents of college students. The Republicans would provide tuition aid to private and parochial schools. They never speak of: (1) the First Amendment issues involved in aiding parochial schools; (2) the fact that the value of proposed vouchers is insufficient to enlarge access to private schools; (3) the point that as the value is increased, so will a tendency to make public schools a preserve of the impoverished; (4) the fact that vouchers represent still another federal entitlement and may, as well, bring government controls into private education.
Other than tax breaks, what does Clinton offer? He stresses proposed national ``standards'' for state-operated schools, advancing the notion that, through some alchemy, Uncle Sam (and untrained volunteers) can teach Johnny to read and do his sums. About welfare, interestingly, the president is direct and explicit. Now that welfare is their responsibility, he says, states are bound morally to make reform come out right; they must feel the weight of the undertaking. The long-standing centrality of states in public education, on the other hand, is hardly mentioned as Clinton goes stumping for public support of his proposals.
Clinton offers no idea, insight or challenge that will outlast his term. Perhaps the president should turn from Isaiah for a while to Robert Schuller's more homely observation that ``Nothing great ever happens on the OK level.'' MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.