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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2997)	12/31/2003 5:49:11 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

The campaign rhetoric about deficits By Thomas Bray / The Detroit News A prominent theme of next year’s national elections, at both the presidential and congressional levels, is likely to be the reappearance of the deficit. But the sound you just heard — of thousands of readers turning the page to find something more interesting to read about — tells the story. The average voter couldn’t care less about the deficit. What he or she really cares about is, first, national security, and second, economic growth. And the average voter would be right. Even if this fiscal year’s deficit rises to $500 billion, that’s still less than 5 percent of gross domestic product, less than the Reagan deficits at their peak. And as we learned during the late 1980s and 1990s, economic growth, accompanied by spending restraint, is the best way to fight deficits. Yes, future generations will be saddled with paying off the debt. But insofar as the debt is a result of the battle against terrorism, any consideration of future debt should be balanced by the recognition that our children and grandchildren will also inherit a priceless asset: freedom. We boomers, after all, are still paying off the debt racked up during nearly 30 years of Cold War. Nobody would now argue that the defense spending of that era was a poor investment, even if it involved lots of waste. The surge in domestic spending is, to be sure, far more problematic. President Bush is getting grief from conservatives for signing into law, among other things, a $400 billion (over 10 years) Medicare prescription drug benefit and for failing to veto lots of pork-barrel spending. The Medicare reforms that Bush sought would come only in the distant future, if ever. But let’s remember: In democratic politics, you often have to give something in order to get something, particularly when you become president under the conditions that Bush did. If he is failing fiscally, at least he’s failing in the right direction. He clearly understands that the task of leadership is not to take a meat cleaver to spending, but to persuade members of the public that they can get a better bang for their buck by spending their own money on themselves. Gerald Ford, let us not forget, was the champion wielder of the veto pen in modern times, and look what it got him: dumped from office in 1976 in favor of Jimmy Carter, who promptly took the economy over a cliff. The left points to the surpluses of the late Clinton years. But they were a happy accident, not a result of Clinton policy. (Until the late 1990s, in fact, Clinton budgeters were still predicting deficits as far as the eye could see.) The election of a Republican Congress in 1994 served as a natural check on the inclinations of a Democratic president, allowing the economy to recover and resume the boom unleashed by the Reagan revolution. Alas, Clinton opposed most of the reforms that would have kept those boats floating even longer. His surpluses were almost bound to vanish at the first hint of recession, despite all those silly, straight-line projections of trillions in excess dollars over the next 10 years. And September 11 pushed an already faltering economy over yet another cliff. What’s needed is reform of much of the underlying legislation that drives entitlement spending higher and higher, as well as fundamental change in the budget process. Let the left rail about deficits. Everybody understands that it is simply trying to spook Republicans into agreeing to a tax increase, after which excuses will be found to spend all of the new revenue — and then some. The real test for Bush will be whether he stays the course on reform, rather than running a safe campaign touting the capture of Saddam and past tax cuts. Whichever party can persuade the public that it understands how to make the economy grow will own 2004. It will also be trusted to make fixes in the budget that will keep deficits from rising to truly dangerous levels. Deficits are but a symptom of deeper problems that can’t be fixed by a veto pen alone, and voters are smart enough to know it. Detroit News columnist Thomas Bray is published on Sunday and Wednesday. He can be contacted at (313) 222-2544 and tbray@detnews.com.