
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 15, 1990                   TAG: 9005140348
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GRAMM-RUDMAN DODGE?

THE WORD is trumpeted that George Bush is ready to go behind the barn and talk new taxes with Congress. He swore that he wouldn't, of course, and as recently as January was promising to balance the budget by 1993 with "no new taxes." If anything, taxes were to be cut for those whom fortune had favored with capital gains.

But the kitten of a deficit Bush's budget projected now threatens to become a tiger that might trigger arbitrary spending cuts of $50 billion to $100 billion under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. That would be real news with uncomfortable, perhaps dangerous, consequences.

So the president wants company and is willing, so it's reported, to talk with Democratic leaders as if he had never taken the oath against new taxes. Those reading his lips see them forming words like sales, sin and gasoline taxes and other possibilities stopping short of a change in income taxes.

Characteristically, though, Bush aides refer to the deficit not as the product of decisions made by him and the Congress, but as something having a life and will of its own.

Presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater spoke of "anxiety over a deficit that is fighting every reduction attempt that we can come up with." Too bad that he can't drive a stake through its heart. And too bad, as well, that two-bit political gamesmanship continues to cloud the emerging reality that Americans have to pay for the governmental services they consume.

Wyoming's Alan Simpson, a key House Republican leader, says, for example, that George Bush meant no change in the income tax when he pledged "no new taxes." For Simpson, an able and witty man, such drivel is a comedown to the level of small-born Democrats unable to conceal their glee that bad economic tidings threaten to pay Bush back for his campaign demagoguery.

The Democratic leadership, however, is appropriately solemn - and appropriately wary. What they know of George Bush's new thinking comes mostly from surrogates. The president still has not gone on record by sharing his thoughts with the public. Until he does so, the public knee will jerk to the well-taught tune that deficits don't matter.

Bush essentially won his office on that proposition or, more precisely, used it, as had Reagan, to buy insurance that he would win. Another part of the Reagan-Bush teaching went like this: Raising taxes when the economy is humming might put it into a tailspin. If that were so, a citizen might wonder why is it wise to talk of new taxes now that the economy has turned sluggish.

There's a lot to explain, and it's the president's job to do it. Not in order to assume blame, but in order to govern. Regarding blame, Republican congressman Bill Gradison of Ohio has said all that needs to be said: "In the presence of [the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings] statute that promises good and steady progress toward a balanced budget, three Congresses and two administrations have cooked the books. . . ."

Regarding governance, the president needs to assert as his own some kind of fiscal philosophy and stand by it. The traditional Republican doctrine he was raised on would serve well: Pay the bills. Hold down debt. Aim to balance the books. The opposite, in other words, of what has guided, or misguided, the nation over the past nine years.

Debt has tripled to $3 trillion. That figure's beyond calculation for most of us, but the interest isn't. Debt service consumes one-seventh of the budget. It eats up all the federal income taxes paid by people living in 24 states west of the Mississippi. It buys nothing of use for the present and future, paying only for the free lunches of the past. And debt service continues to grow because interest rates are rising and nothing is done to reduce the debt.

If there is a way out of this mess, it has to begin with some truth-telling on the part of the president. As matters stand, there is no accountability within the government and little perception within the public that chronic deficits pose a cancerous problem. The status quo will continue until the president decides to lead by defining problems and laying out objectives.

The core question is whether his objective is just enough tax tinkering to dodge the Gramm-Rudman bullet this year. If so, Congress should refuse to go along. The nation needs enough revenue and spending cuts to assure a certain end to deficits rather than the usual cooked books and assorted fiscal fakeries.

by CNB