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| Commentary: Outside View: Calling Ross Perot
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- By the time you finish reading this sentence, the federal budget deficit will have grown by $127,156. That's the good news. If the new Congressional Budget Office estimate is correct, the same sentence next year will cost $152,207. This year's deficit of $401 billion is by far the largest in U.S. history and comes only three years after Washington posted its fourth consecutive budget surplus. Next year, Washington is expected to spend $480 billion more than it takes in - a deficit greater than the entire federal budget in 1978. BizVantage – Serious business, investment and technology intelligence for a serious advantage. It gets even worse. It won't be until 2010 that the first baby boomer reaches retirement age and becomes eligible for full Social Security and Medicare benefits. And the fastest-growing segment of American society is the very aged -- those over the age of 85, who provide little in tax revenue to the federal government and absorb enormous costs through Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements. With the deficit at shocking levels, the most perplexing question is why aren't any Democratic candidates making the failure of George Bush and the Republicans to live within their means a major campaign issue? After all, the federal budget deficit was perhaps the most potent political issue in 1992, when H. Ross Perot surfed a wave of red ink into a serious presidential bid. Let's not forget that Republicans, historically the party of fiscal conservatism, hammered the Democratic Congress throughout the 1980s and early 1990s for overspending. The deficit became such a grave concern for Democrats that Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993 to, he said, get Washington's fiscal house in order. The Democrats are well placed to hammer the GOP on this issue. Most likely, they are reticent because the solution calls for tough choices - raising taxes, cutting spending, reining in entitlements or a combination of the three. In addition, the deficit doesn't rank high among voters' concerns in public opinion surveys. But polls can be misleading. When the deficit is explained properly it becomes a proxy for the issues and values that voters care about deeply - the economy, protecting Medicare and Social Security, keeping one's word and living within one's means. It is possible to promote solutions that don't scare off voters, like freezing tax rates where they stand today, eliminating corporate tax loopholes, and limiting growth in government spending. It would be smart politics for a Democrat, like presidential candidates Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., or John Edwards, D-N.C., to break out of pack by making the budget deficit a defining issue. Either could use the issue to show leadership and differentiate themselves from the rest of the field - who are proposing new spending on health insurance, prescription drugs, and education. It would be a way to put President Bush and the Republican Congress on the defensive on an issue for which they have no easy response. After all, they are the ones who passed nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts without restraining spending. They are the ones presiding over a sluggish economy. One time-honored Republican solution to the deficit is to rail against wasteful government spending, but even this is a trap. The deficit is now so large that should Congress eliminate all funding for education, housing, the space program, highway improvements, national parks, medical research, food stamps, farm subsidies, the FBI, veteran's hospitals, and foreign aid the deficit would still be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In politics, it always pays to take an issue away from the opposing party and make it your own. Democrats have a golden opportunity to take the issue of fiscal responsibility away from the Republicans. They will get credit for talking turkey to the American people and they will be helping to solve one of the most important issues in the nation. If they don't, it may be time to call Ross Perot and have him dust off his old charts and rev up a few infomercials, because no one in Washington is talking about the deficit. -- Jim Kessler is president of the political consulting firm Definition Strategies and can be reached at jkessler@defstrat.com. -- United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues.
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