Another election year is almost upon us, and I am already gritting my teeth. Once I took delight in elections. They used to provide zest and drama and (if you let your imagination run just a bit) you could even think that the results would make a difference in how the country was run.
These days, however, I have my doubts. I see little reason to expect that the 1992 presidential election, regardless of its outcome, is going to significantly alter how the country is run. In my view, this is because few candidates of either party will dare to confront some of the unhappy facts behind America's current predicament.It is an economic predicament, largely, one born of wishful thinking and a reluctance to face disturbing evidence. As a people and as a government, we for years have been spending far more than we have taken in. The result, as Charles Dickens could have predicted, is accumulating debt and mounting strains on our national economy.
Many governments of our largest cities, for example, are nearly broke. Many state governments, despite relentless budget cuts this year, face even steeper deficits in 1992. We as a nation now spend $200 billion each year in interest payments alone on our national debt, which now exceeds $3.5 trillion.
All this debt is a drag - on the nation's capacity to save, to invest, to improve its productivity. But the debt has been incurred, much of it, because of the express will of we, the people. We incurred the public debt because we wanted government benefits without bothering to look at the price tags.
Few political candidates dare talk in these terms. Candid talk about our underlying economic plight might scare voters and raise difficult choices that almost no one really wants to confront. And so our elected leadership tiptoes through the economic minefields, playing games with makeshift "budget agreements" and refusing to slice away at cushy middle-class benefits, while postponing crucial decisions on aiding such problem areas as education and health insurance.
Thus we find ourselves a nation perplexed by the politics of fear, shrinking from the decisions that could push those fears away. We are unwilling to give up so much as a shred of our woven-in-Washington security blanket. We balk at taxing ourselves to help those in greatest need. And we utterly reject the idea that we as a nation might lend a hand to the throngs in the former Soviet realm who, having cast off communism, are groping for a new life.
Remedies for America's economic ills need not impose crushing burdens on anyone. To take just one example: If the annual cost-of-living increase in Social Security payments were limited to half of the rise in consumer prices, several billion dollars a year would be saved.
This sort of adjustment is not Draconian. It is not punitive. It is not reactionary. It is merely a recognition of common sense. America cannot go breezily on, spending more than it takes in, without eventually bringing on disaster.