The issue came up in the St. Louis debate and it was a common question among the Sabbath-day gasbags 48 hours ago. The good news is, the political press has rediscovered the deficit and wants a fiscally responsible president. The bad news is, the same press thinks Kerry and Bush are equally flawed in their approaches. They’re not.
In some ways, the very idea is silly. Bush inherited the biggest surpluses in American history and, despite promises to the contrary, delivered the biggest deficits in American history. The president’s credibility on the issue of debt and fiscal responsibility falls somewhere between non-existent and a bad joke. No matter what one thinks of John Kerry, he couldn’t possibly be much worse than what we’ve got.
Indeed, The Economist, which is hardly The Nation when it comes to budgetary policy, surveyed a series of experts and found they overwhelmingly prefer Kerry’s approach to long-term fiscal health.
Yet Charlie Gibson mentioned in the debate that he doesn’t see how either candidate’s numbers “add up.” And a report from the Concord Coalition, which advocates on behalf of balanced budgets, insisted that both Kerry and Bush will continue on the path of high deficits for the foreseeable future.
The truth, however, is that Kerry’s approach is far superior to Bush’s. The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn helped explain why.
So if somebody wants to know whether Kerry’s plan would do enough to balance the budget, the high-minded answer is “no.” But, at this point, voters can’t afford to be too high-minded in November, because they have to answer a more immediate question: Of the two candidates, which one’s plan for reducing the deficit is better? This is where the Concord Coalition, and its friends in the media, are proving spectacularly unhelpful, because they can’t bring themselves to admit the obvious: Kerry’s plan for reducing the deficit, however flawed, is far better than President Bush’s.
The primary difference rests in three areas: changes to the tax code, flexibility on spending priorities, and personal histories.
First, as John Edwards explained on Meet the Press, for example, the Concord Coalition isn’t giving KE04 a fair shake.
By rolling back tax cuts for wealthy Americans, closing loopholes in the corporate tax code, streamlining the government, and improving the efficiency of medical care, the Kerry campaign insists it really can meet its target of halving the deficit in one presidential term while still financing a huge health care plan, among other things, and preserving the Bush tax cuts for the middle class.
But Kerry and Edwards are, more importantly, willing to scale back on their domestic priorities if the money just isn’t there to pay for them. As Kerry said in the St. Louis debate:
“I’ve even scaled back some of my favorite programs already, like the child-care program I wanted to fund and the national service program, because the president’s deficit keeps growing and I’ve said as a pledge, ‘I’m going to cut the deficit in half in four years.'”
Edwards stressed the same approach on Sunday.
“If we have done all those things and, at the end of the day, it becomes necessary to make sure we do not raise taxes on the middle class, then we will roll back some of our ideas. John’s already said, for example, national service, which is something he’s committed to, early childhood, things that we–are near and dear to us, and we think very important to the country, but, if it becomes necessary to meet that commitment, we will roll things back.”
Does Bush make similar pronouncements? Has he ever been willing to revisit priorities in the interest of fiscal responsibility? With an annual deficit approaching a half-trillion dollars, the answer should be pretty obvious.
And, finally, Kerry has the credibility Bush doesn’t have because Kerry has always taken deficits seriously.
As a senator, Kerry actually broke with his party leadership to vote for the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act — officially titled the “Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985” — that was a precursor to the PAYGO system established in 1990. He also voted for President Clinton’s 1993 and 1997 budgets, two controversial measures that led to the creation of budget surpluses. In 2000, the ten-year budget forecast predicted a $4.6 trillion surplus — at least some of which then-Governor Bush, like his opponent Al Gore, promised to save in order to shore up Social Security and Medicare. But, as we all know, Bush didn’t save that money. Instead, he pushed through massive tax cuts, ignoring warnings that they were unsustainable, particularly given the unpredictability of the economy. Today, the ten-year outlook is for $2 to $5 trillion in deficits.
The difference, it seems to me, couldn’t be clearer.