Democratic duel
Dean is called stingy on Medicare -- but is that necessarily bad?
October 1, 2003
Rep. Richard Gephardt, whose tax-and-spend theory of governance would inflict impoverishment on America, has figured out a way to attack Howard Dean.
The Vermont governor, Gephardt disclosed, had once favored Medicare adjustments also favored by Newt Gingrich, but Gephardt did not then conclude what any reasonable person should have: Dean may have been right.
Gephardt's point was that such Medicare changes would be the work of the devil. Mentioning Gingrich's name might have seemed enough to make his case in the Democratic presidential campaign, but there is another factor to consider, namely that if you do not restructure this shaky program, it will collapse.
The critique of Medicare applies to the economy at large. And at the party debate last week, the 10 candidates fussed among themselves about whether they should roll back some or all of the Bush tax cuts.
While the latest entrant, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, stayed vague and kept his head down, Dean took a beating because he favors rolling back all the cuts, including cuts for the middle class. He made a valid point by noting that the deficits would be huge if the country kept most of the tax cuts intact while also undertaking the new spending programs that he and the other candidates favor.
What Dean should have said is that the need now is not for new programs at all, but for spending reductions, which would be necessary even if the tax cuts had never been enacted.
By some estimates, the tax cuts are responsible for only 25 percent of the deficit. At the moment, these reductions are also helping to stimulate economic growth.
There is this to be said for the Democrats. They are no worse than the Republicans, at least the Republican in the White House who says all the right things about spending but then, with the generous help of Congress, continues to shatter spending records. |
