Give Damocles his sword back
AMERICA HAS a Republican Congress and a Republican
All of this normally would guarantee a political lock for the party in power. Why, then, are so many folks riled about the economy--including a good chunk of the GOP rank and file? To paraphrase famed Democratic strategist James Carville, "It's the pork, stupid." All the economic good news in the world can't hide the spending sprees of this 109th Congress, nor what those sprees have wrought: a ballooning national debt that hangs over the nation like the Sword of Damocles.
Some numbers to ponder: $423 billion and $296 billion. The first is the deficit that the administration originally projected for the budget year ending in September; the second, the revised figure announced the other day by President Bush himself. Usually a difference in the right direction of $127 billion justifies celebration, but $296 billion in the hole hardly merits a presidential trumpet. It's a staggering figure--and we haven't yet seen the first wave of baby boomers demanding their Medicare and Social Security allotments.
Mr. Bush heralded the new data thus: "Economic growth fueled by tax relief has sent our tax revenues soaring." He noted the historically impressive 18 straight quarters of economic growth. Well and good--but it all could come to naught because of unrestrained spending. As Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., notes, "In nominal terms, [this deficit] is still one of the four largest in history."
But before we place the noose around the neck of Mr. Bush, who has never vetoed a spending bill and sired the ultra-costly Medicare prescription-drug entitlement, let's reflect that he hardly deserves to swing alone. The president proposes a budget, to be sure, but it must make its way through Congress. And there are few innocents in that labyrinth. Nearly every legislator, of both major parties, loves pork, adding fancy new projects to the budget, keeping alive dubious district or state programs, or blindly throwing money into venerable endeavors that need financial overhaul.
In its recent "Third-Quarter Report Card for Congress," the estimable Heritage Foundation gives basically failing marks to both House and Senate for their fiscal habits. Heritage notes that by the end of this fiscal year, federal spending will have soared 45 percent since 2001. What's more, says the report, defense spending accounts for roughly a quarter of that eruption: The war on terror shouldn't give political cover to spendaholics.
So do we throw the bums out in November? Perhaps--but in the Old Dominion, caution is in order. The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste gives 1st District Rep. Jo Ann Davis, for instance, a 66 rating--within the "Taxpayer Friendly" range. Fellow Republican Eric Cantor of the 7th District garners a 74. (Compare these to 8th District Democratic Rep. James Moran's rating of 15.) On the Senate side, George Allen gets a 75, John Warner a 71.
Respectable. Yet right now something more than respectability is required. Nobody in the Virginia delegation is among the handful of high-profile members dubbed Pork Busters. If you're not part of the energized opposition to crazed spending, you're effectively enabling it, whatever your level of personal fiscal virtue. This fight is about saving the country from ruin. That should be every member's Job No. 1.
Until the sinners repent and the good folk burn with reformist zeal, America dances like the summer grasshopper, celebrating deficits in the billions, ignoring the need to prepare for a winter day.