[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL Paging Ross Perot LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-tax13oct13.story

EDITORIAL

Paging Ross Perot

 October 13, 2004

 Here's one thing John F. Kerry and George W. Bush have in common ‹ neither
is sufficiently concerned about those growing federal deficits and their
threat to the economy. Where is Ross Perot when we need him?

 Both candidates say they have a plan to halve the deficit over the next
four years. But as exasperated moderator Charles Gibson pointed out in
Friday's debate, it's hard to see how Bush or Kerry would get us from here
to there.

 Bush deserves being singled out for getting us into this mess. It's fair
for him to point out that the recession and the war on terror were bound to
render meaningless the long-term, multitrillion-dollar surplus estimates
that greeted him when he was sworn in. But he should be condemned for
sticking with ambitious tax cuts that were billed as a rebate of those
surpluses, even as the plus signs vaporized. It is one of the more damaging
examples of the administration's unwillingness to alter course in the face
of altered circumstances. This year's deficit will exceed $400 billion, and
the government's overall debt could nearly double, from $4.3 trillion today
to $8 trillion, over the next decade.

 Bush's rebates to the wealthiest taxpayers failed to deliver the economic
stimulus he promised, partly because they weren't really designed with that
in mind. He insists on making them all permanent nonetheless.

 Meanwhile, the president has failed to impose any spending discipline on
his Republican Congress. He has not vetoed any spending measures and
strongly backed the drug-company windfall in the Medicare expansion and the
outrageously wasteful farm legislation of 2002.

 In Friday's debate, Bush failed to acknowledge any meaningful mistakes,
allowing only that he regretted some of his appointments. That list probably
includes Paul O'Neill, his first Treasury secretary. But Bush's mistake
wasn't appointing O'Neill. It was failing to listen to his warnings that the
nation couldn't afford Bush's tax cuts. Bush's economic team would like us
now to believe that born-again spending discipline and rosy economic
projections will magically cut the deficit by half in a second term.

 The Kerry campaign has not capitalized on Bush's financial mismanagement as
forcefully as it should, mainly because it has allowed its own wish list to
get in the way of a clear pledge of fiscal responsibility. Kerry would roll
back the tax cuts Bush awarded to households earning more than $200,000 a
year, but the savings would be more than offset by the cost of the senator's
healthcare and education proposals. Kerry would still have to pay for
extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone else, plus some additional
middle-class credits that he has repeatedly promised. His deficit-halving
plan ends up being as unrealistic as the president's.

 That's disappointing because Kerry at least plays lip service to the notion
that deficits pose a long-term threat to the economy, as the government
consumes a larger share of available credit. Kerry would be better able to
associate himself with the prosperity of the Clinton years, and to rebut
charges that he is a tax-and-spend liberal, if he acknowledged that getting
the government's finances in order may have to come before new tax cuts and
higher spending.

 Kerry and Bush are also equally guilty of not addressing the long-term
viability of Social Security and Medicare. But to get candidates and voters
to focus on doom-and-gloom projections, we may just have to call Perot back
into the fray.


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