Clinton deserves some credit. First, his plan is far more detailed than anything from Ross Perot. Second, Clinton has placed health-care reform at the center of the political agenda, something that-in three and a half years-President Bush hasn’t done. Unless health costs are controlled, government spending can’t be controlled. Indeed, other health problems (i.e., spotty insurance coverage) will worsen. You can argue with Clinton’s remedies, but at least they offer the prospect of debate.
Finally, Clinton has broached, however timidly and imperfectly, sensitive issues that need to be discussed more openly. He argues that the elderly should bear more of the cost of government, even though his proposal is fairly modest (those with more than $125,000 of income would pay higher Medicare fees). He also concedes the need to raise taxes, even though his higher taxes would affect only a sliver of the well-to-do (his economic plan would require an increase in the top tax rate to about 36 percent for couples with incomes around $180,000 or $200,000).
But not much else can be said for Clinton’s 22-page program, which brims with cliches (“Washington is dominated by powerful interests and an entrenched bureaucracy”) and dubious calculations. Clinton projects that, with his “strategy,” the budget deficit would drop from $323 billion in 1993 to $141 billion in 1996. Look again, and little of the deficit reduction is Clinton’s doing.
The biggest declines occur as a result of a normal economic recovery. Tax revenues rise; some welfare spending falls. A modest (but sustained) recovery would cut the deficit to $193 billion in 1996. By itself, that’s 70 percent of Clinton’s projected drop in the deficit. Because Clinton considers his ideas so fabulous, he assumes, the economy would grow slightly faster if he becomes president. Wham, that slashes roughly $27 billion more from the deficit in 1996. Only $25 billion of the deficit reduction (or 14 percent) reflects his specific proposals for spending cuts or tax increases.
Even these are fairly fictitious. In 1996, he chops spending $8.5 billion through “administrative savings.” He saves $2.5 billion by overhauling the Defense Department’s “inventory system.” Then, there’s $4.6 billion in savings from “management reform” at the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the agency handling the bailout of the savings and loan industry. The virtue of these spending cuts, of course, is that they are politically painless. No identifiable constituency suffers. Likewise, Clinton estimates he could raise $13.5 billion in new taxes in 1996 (and $9 billion next year) by preventing “tax avoidance by foreign corporations.”
Each of the problems identified by Clinton is real. Federal agencies have bureaucratic bloat, there’s waste in the Pentagon’s inventories everything from bombs to rubber bands-and surely the RTC isn’t perfectly managed. The trouble is that some waste is inevitable and some can be eliminated only through tedious changes. Finally, the savings are hard to estimate. The same is true of tax avoidance by foreign companies operating in the United States. Congress and the Treasury have flailed at the issue for years. It won’t instantly yield tons of money.
We won’t (and shouldn’t) elect a president this year solely on his ability to balance the budget. A candidate’s character, his capacity to handle crises and his positions on other issues-from abortion to trade-all matter. But the budget provides a threshold test of leadership, because it requires a president to pose unpleasant choices and to orchestrate changes that benefit society as a whole. In fairness to Clinton, President Bush is most responsible for the political climate that prevents open discussion of these issues. When he said, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” he condoned cynicism and sanctioned stalemate.
But Clinton has yet to prove he can fill the vacuum. His alleged spending cuts and tax increases actually exceed his claimed deficit reductions, because he has also promised new spending programs and tax cuts. In 1996, these would total an estimated $64 billion. He’s got a middle-class tax cut or child allowance (take your pick). He’s got a “targeted investment tax credit.” He’s got a Rebuild America Fund that would spend $20 billion on everything from roads to a “national information network” to “environmental technology.”
What we have here is a man who hasn’t made choices. There’s a pitch for everyone. The megapitch is that “investments” will soon speed up economic growth. They won’t. Some of Clinton’s ideas may be desirable in the sense that they would ultimately improve society. Others are fancy pork barrel. In an economy of nearly $6 trillion, a few billion dollars worth of extra spending on bridges, Head Start or new toxic-waste technology won’t magically raise growth rates. The budget should serve mainly as a vehicle for dividing public and private responsibilities-not as an instrument for tinkering with economic growth.
Should Clinton become president, the fate of his “strategy” is already sealed. It would fail. The Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office would duly find that his deficit savings are wildly overstated. President Clinton, therefore, would be forced to renege on some or most of his promises. He would have to rescind some of his new spending, or revoke his tax cuts, or find new spending cuts or propose new tax increases. Perhaps more likely, he would forget about the budget deficits.
We can also guess at the consequences of a Clinton presidency, at least for popular psychology and polities. At best, all this would deepen public disillusion. At worst, it would perpetuate political paralysis. Clinton complains that the press doesn’t pay enough attention to “the issues.” He resents being characterized as “slick” and argues that he alone has offered a program of substance. But taking Clinton on Clinton’s terms–the issue–doesn’t help him much. His plan seems slick, because it is.
