Deficit Demagogues

The New York Times
Deficit Demagogues

Less than a week after he denounced the "wayward path" of deficit spending to a gathering of 2,000 Republican Party stalwarts, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and would-be president, was busy presiding over business as usual in the Senate. Last Thursday, Mr. Frist, 49 of his fellow Republican senators and one Democrat approved a $2.8 trillion budget for 2007. The budget vote came just hours after Mr. Frist and 51 other Republicans voted to raise the nation's debt limit for the fourth time in five years — this time by $781 billion, to nearly $9 trillion. All of that increase will be needed to pay for earlier tax cuts and spending increases, and, if the Republicans get their way on taxes, to pay for future deficit-financed tax cuts.

Wayward, indeed. Mr. Frist has voted for every major spending increase and tax cut backed by President Bush since 2001. As the Senate leader for more than three years, he bears even greater responsibility than his fellow enablers for the country's dismal financial condition. Yet he is certainly not alone these days in calling for greater budget restraint while pursuing reckless policies. Other Republican presidential hopefuls, notably Senator George Allen and Senator John McCain, have also been coming out forcefully as fiscal conservatives.

Mr. Allen's record is no better than Mr. Frist's. Mr. McCain made a stand by voting against the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003 and Mr. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. But, like his fellow Republican contenders, he supports extending tax cuts for investors, even though they are not paid for.

If leading Republicans were serious about the deficit, here's what they'd be saying:

Let the tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2008 and 2010 unless the budget improves significantly before then. Republicans want voters to believe that the deficit is the result of spending increases alone — not tax cuts. That's false. The swing from a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 to a $371 billion deficit today is a huge deterioration in the nation's fiscal balance, equal to 5.3 percent of the economy. Of that, fully 62 percent is due to lower tax revenues.

Reimpose bulletproof budget rules. Potential candidates have started calling for a presidential line-item veto and a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Those are shopworn delaying tactics that let politicians avoid hard calls. A real deficit-reduction plan would call for a return to the budget rules in effect from 1990 to 2001. These "pay as you go" rules helped create the budget surpluses of the 1990's by forcing Congress to pay for both tax cuts and entitlement spending increases.

An effort to reimpose the rules was defeated in the Senate as recently as last week, with 50 Republicans, including Mr. Frist and Mr. Allen, refusing to reinstate the rules. All 44 Democratic senators, 5 Republicans and one independent voted for the rules, but a majority of 51 votes is needed to win. Mr. McCain, to his credit, was among the 5 Republican senators who voted with the Democrats.

Spend wisely. For all their recent talk about wasteful spending, none of the Republican hopefuls have offered specifics about what they would ax. But in the past, their targets have been programs that foster better health, education and infrastructure. Those are precisely the investments we need for economic vitality.

A serious leader would balance spending and taxes in order to govern well.