Bush says that if Congress swallows his entire tossed salad of measures, which Congress won’t, the economy will grow 2.2 percent this year. Such paltry progress is not a tide that will raise many ships. Indeed, sinkings will increase. The administration expects the average number of people on food stamps each month in fiscal 1993 to increase 1.6 million to 25.8 million.
In a remarkable three weeks, Bush made the worst foreign trip in the history of presidential travel (the “bashing on his knees” debacle in Japan) and his mea culpa grovel in New Hampshire. To change the subject he now proposes to jigger tax withholding tables so people will get, in effect, their rebates now. For most people it will mean less than a buck a day. Bush predicts people will spend this windfall on “clothing, college or to get a new car.” Socks, maybe. See you at J.C. Penney.
By identifying 246 programs that “don’t deserve federal funding,” Bush implies that all the thousands and thousands of other programs are deserving. Most of his savings consist of counting chickens that will never hatch. For example, there is a $315 million project in the district of Rep. Jamie Whitten (Democrat, Mississippi), who has been in Congress 50 years and chairs the Appropriations Committee. Bush will kill that program. Not.
Bush’s budget, which assumes sluggish growth of the economy and rapid growth of entitlements, portends disagreeable polities as far as the eye can see. Demography is destiny. The aging of the population-the elderly are the disproportionate recipients of transfer payments–guarantees the inexorable growth of the welfare state. Its taxes and deficits sop up society’s savings and suffocate the energies of the private sector which must pay the bills.
This first post-Cold War budget-the first since Yeltsin clambered onto the tank-is the first in which social security spending exceeds defense spending. Four budgets from now, interest payments on the national debt (now 14 percent of the budget) will swallow more money than defense. Today’s budget produces the first half-a-trillion-dollar deficit, properly calculated. The administration anticipates a fiscal 1993 deficit of $399.1 billion. To that sum add $63.4 billion, the fiscal 1993 surplus (we have quit calling the surpluses “reserves”; they are not reserved) from social security taxes. This surplus is being used to run the government and actually amounts to borrowing from the future. Then subtract other tax revenues that will leak away because of the tax cut bidding war that is about to begin. The real gap between spending and non-social security revenues may soar past $500 billion.
If social security taxes were not unreasonably high-if the system were on a pay-as-you-go basis-those taxes would be $63.4 billion lower. Two-thirds of all taxpayers pay more in social security taxes than income taxes. Until Democrats cut this regressive tax (it has a flat rate; it is not applicable to incomes over $53,400) their penny-ante posturings about “fairness” will seem disingenuous. But reversing the government’s increasing reliance on that regressive tax would require big changes in taxation. The Democratic Party lacks the moral purpose and intellectual energy requisite for anything so bold.
Democrats hope to hang Bush with rope woven from his rhetoric. In 1988, Bush, paying Reagan the homage of plagiarism, promised that “if you elect me president, you will be better off four years from now than you are today.” For that to be true by November, America must experience a 10-month boom bigger than any nation has ever known. He said, “On jobs, my mission is 30 in 8”–30 million new jobs in eight years. Never mind the audacity of Bush assuming his election to a second term while running for a first. But so far, Bush is 29,912,000 jobs short of his goal. He’d better hurry.
Eight states have 18 or more electoral votes: California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas. Seven-all but Texas-have fewer jobs than in 1988. Those seven have 196 electoral votes, just 74 short of the winning 270. In 1988 Bush carried all of the seven except New York, but with an average of just 53.3 percent of the two-party vote. Not counting Florida, which he won with 61.3 percent, his average in the other six was just 51.9 percent.
Bush promised a “kinder and gentler nation.” For the most vulnerable Americans, the poor, Bush’s recession-racked America is harsher. They suffer first and most as the recession ripples through government budgets at all levels. This is not surprising: when a crippled ship starts to take on water, the first to drown are those traveling in steerage, down near the water line.
Neither is it surprising that political debate has taken on a harsher tone. Bush says, “I will do whatever it takes to win.” But a Bush campaign official expresses the Bush administration’s real spirit: “We’ll stoop to whatever is necessary to win.” In one apposite if indiscreet word,‘stoop"-you have the administration’s condescension to the electorate. Bush has always seemed to consider campaigning a kind of slumming. That is why he turned to the likes of the late Lee Atwater, who never found a tone he could not lower. This year Bush cannot dwell on his domestic achievements and voters do not care a fig about foreign policy, so he will be drawn to demonizing his Democratic opponent. This is not going to be pretty. When Bush tries to roar like a lion, the sound comes out small. Meow.
