By MARSHA MERCER
As we dive into the 2016 presidential race, it’s worth
remembering a low point in the 2012 contest -- so that maybe, just maybe, we
won’t repeat it.
Cast your mind back to August 2011, when eight candidates for
the Republican presidential nomination were in a debate in Ames, Iowa. A moderator
asked for a show of hands: Who would walk away from a deal that cut $10 from
the deficit for every $1 in tax increases?
All eight candidates raised their hands – and the crowd of GOP
activists erupted in cheers and shouts of approval.
We can agree that the way the question was asked, with a
quick show of hands, hardly invites serious discussion. And, yes, primaries and
caucuses bring out true-believers from party wings. General election voters are
more moderate. Still, it was a defining moment: Revenues would be off the table
-- again.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman later said he regretted going
along with the pack but not doing so would have required a lot of explaining.
“What was going through my mind was, `Don’t I just want to
get through this?’” Huntsman said. “That has caused me a lot of heartburn.”
Democrats as well as Republicans want to “get through this”
without tackling the tough fiscal issues. But thoughtful people in both parties
believe meaningful deficit reduction must include a combination of spending
cuts and revenue increases. We keep putting off the hard conversations needed
to find the right mix.
Conventional wisdom says that nobody gets elected telling
voters to eat their spinach. Successful candidates promise pie with meringue a
mile high. Obviously, it’s more inspiring to talk about creating jobs,
improving education and promoting cutting-edge technology than about slicing entitlements
and raising the retirement age.
And yet, many voters do want what’s best for America. They
would listen to a presidential contender who has the courage and skill to explain
why it’s time for spinach.
Two veteran political pros are urging us to ask more of our presidential
candidates this time around.
Retired U.S. Sens. John C. Danforth, Republican of Missouri,
and J. Robert Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, have a message for the presidential
candidates of 2016: “Don’t
duck the debt.”
The debt is the
cumulative amount the nation owes, and it continues to rise. This is happening even
though the deficit, the difference between what the government takes in and
spends in a year, has been declining since the end of the Great Recession.
Kerrey and Danforth co-chaired
the 1994 Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, in which 30 of 32
commission members agreed then that “current trends are not sustainable” and
urged policy changes. These included raising national savings, preventing
entitlements from consuming ever more of the federal budget, dealing with
projected increases in health care costs, and balancing spending and revenues
for Medicare and Social Security.
The New York Times
headline about that 1994 report read, “Yawns greet a warning about the burning
fuse on entitlements.”
Some things have changed for the better in the
last 20 years, Kerrey and Danforth agreed Tuesday as they released an update at
a forum sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Council and Concord Coalition in
Washington. We spend less than projected on interest on the debt; health care
costs have declined. Overall, though, the trend still is not sustainable, they
said. The burning fuse is shorter.
The burden of debt
has risen from about half the gross domestic product in 1994 to three-fourths, and
is still growing. We tip-toe around the big
problems – health care costs and entitlements. Our aging population taps Social
Security and Medicare more each year, taking money we could invest in domestic
and international priorities to make us stronger as a nation.
To the presidential candidates
in 2016, whoever they are, Kerrey and Danforth say: “Your campaign promises for
reviving the economy, strengthening national defense, improving the social
safety net or reducing the tax burden will ring hollow if they count on an
escalating and unsustainable infusion of borrowed money.”
Like it or not, the
next president will have to focus on fiscal issues. Voters should ask
candidates for their solutions to the nation’s fiscal mess, and candidates should
be straight with the people.
Let us eat spinach.
© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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