The federal budget is fat and getting fatter every day. Under the Bush
administration, we have gone on an unprecedented binge, turning a record
$236 billion surplus into a $157 billion deficit. Next year, President
Bush will break his father's record for the largest deficit in history,
and the White House concedes that deficits will continue for years to
come.
Over the next two years, the president will try to blame this splurge
on Democratic largesse. To be sure, some Democrats have a constant craving
to spend money, but for the most part, their pet programs aren't the ones
getting fat. The return to fiscal obesity has less to do with increased
domestic spending for highway projects or job training programs -- expenditures
usually associated with pork-barrel spending -- than it does with Washington's
return to the trickle-down policies of the 1980s, which were supposed
to slim the size of government in the first place.
In fact, the Bush formula for shrinking government may be the most ineffective
federal diet craze Washington has ever tried to sell the American public.
The White House proposed over a trillion dollars in tax cuts, without
removing or reducing a single significant portion of federal spending.
Even Ronald Reagan stopped offering new tax cuts when Congress wouldn't
swallow the budget cuts. The Bush plan is all-you-can-eat now, diet and
exercise later. The president's not starving the government -- just
the future.
It's time to put the federal budget on a sensible, sustainable, long-term
diet that will make the country stronger. We've decided to apply the principles
of the Atkins diet, which has helped many Americans lose weight and keep
it off.
According to Dr. Robert Atkins, the secret to weight loss is keeping
carbohydrates under control. Carbohydrates send our blood sugar on a roller-coaster
ride that makes it virtually impossible for us to feel full, burn fat,
and lose weight. These "killer carbs," Atkins suggests, are
the real roots of America's obesity epidemic.
How can Dr. Atkins' theory help us cut the federal budget? It's simple.
Just as his diet has revolutionized the way many Americans look at losing
weight and staying fit, we think it's time for Washington to topple the
old fiscal food pyramid -- once and for all -- and replace it with
a new budget diet that's rich in protein and low in carbohydrates. Here's
what we mean:
In the 1980s, Reagan and his supply-side economists served up a new fiscal
food pyramid -- one they said would make our government leaner and meaner.
At the top, they argued, was the real meat of domestic spending -- such
as education, police, infrastructure, and technology -- which was high
in fat and should be used only sparingly. At the bottom were all-you-could-eat
tax cuts, which would help wean us off our reliance on federal spending.
Most other spending categories were spread through the pyramid's middle,
with moderate consumption advised.
Politicians from both parties signed up for the low-fat, supply-side
diet. In the hope of slimming government down, they voted to cut taxes
and boost corporate perks that were supposed to spur economic growth.
But, like dieters who can't stop snacking between meals, most politicians
also voted to increase funds for the military and for such domestic programs
as grain subsidies. By the end of the supply-side experiment, the national
debt had reached its highest level ever and the federal work force was
the largest in history. America had become fiscally obese.
So what went wrong? The supply-side diet turned out to be no-calorie
pie in the sky. At some point, Washington just plain lost all sense of
balance. It forgot that big tax cuts contained even more calories than
big spending -- and worse, did nothing to curb Washington's appetite
to spend.
But, as with our eating habits, we can bring our budgets back into balance
if we put a new Atkins-style menu on the table. For starters, that means
kick-starting the weight loss by cutting back drastically on "killer
carbs"-or, for our purposes, large-scale government give-aways that
make shrinking the size of government almost impossible. Here's some of
the carbo-loading that we can do without:
Tax cuts for the top 1 percent. The Bush tax cut was a boondoggle
for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. On average, they will get a
tax cut of $44,000 each, while middle-class Americans will have to settle
for a measly $95 apiece. We could save $750 billion over the next 10 years,
and make the tax code a lot fairer, if we froze future tax cuts for families
earning more than $200,000 per year and maintained a federal tax on estates
valued at more than $7 million.
Reject a second helping. The new Bush tax cut plan offers another
heaping helping to the same privileged few who didn't need the last one,
either. If tax cuts for the wealthy were the ticket to economic growth,
our economy would be at hyperspeed instead of floundering. This time,
Congress should take a pass.
Farm subsidies. Two-thirds of farm subsidies go to the richest
15 percent of agricultural enterprises rather than the family farmers
who really need the help. While we need to help maintain a network of
family food producers in our country, we don't need to line the pockets
of big business. It would cost us just $4 billion per year to guarantee
every full-time farmer in America an income of at least 185 percent of
the federal poverty line ($32,652 for a family of four in 2001), but in
2002 we paid nearly $30 billion in farm subsidies. By limiting farm assistance
to those who truly need it, we can save $308 billion over the next 10
years.
Corporate welfare. Our government hands out about $65 billion
in subsidies to corporations each year for such things as advertising
V8 juice and Friskies cat food overseas. Empowering an independent commission
to scrutinize and eliminate some of these handouts could save billions
of dollars a year and upwards of $100 billion over the next 10 years.
In total, that's more than $1.5 trillion we could cut from our federal
budget diet -- all empty calories, with little or no nutritional value.
In their place, we can substitute some of the proteins we've been told
were off limits, such as spending on better schools, improved infrastructure,
or more police and firefighters. They're a lot better for us than all
of the supposedly low-fat carbohydrates pushed on us by the old fiscal
food pyramid.
George Bush wants to serve up a second helping of the same carbo-loaded,
supply-side diet that made the budget fat in the first place. But if we
want America to be fiscally lean and mean again, we'd take Dr. Atkins'
advice. As he's shown, there's simply no reason we can't have our steak
and eat it, too.
