“Obviously, a man’s judgement cannot be better than the information on which he based it.”
Arthur Sulzberger
Eleven days ago President Clinton delivered a masterfully crafted speech outlining his economic plan to revitalize America and reduce the staggering budget deficit. Then, to fend off the predictable offensive by his critics, the Administration launched an aggressive coast-to-coast campaign to sell his program to the people.
Despite carefully targeted audiences and locations to provide ideal backdrops for recent speeches, skepticism about his “numbers” surfaced, even among people inclined to believe him. Some Democratic loyalists in Congress began expressing concern over major elements of his program which increasingly appeared weighted toward taxes increases and more, not less, government spending. Within the past few days, others have voiced second thoughts about some of the President’s recommended cuts. More radical estimates suggest without further large tax hikes next year and the year after, the deficit picture will actually continue to worsen.
When pressed that he has overlooked billions in potential spending cuts, President Clinton rebuts, he has made some 150 hard cuts and then challenges his critics “to be as specific as I am.”
Yet the details of his cuts remain elusive to the average American. For fun … ask ten people you know to identify five of his cuts and explain exactly what will really be saved by each. It’s unfortunate, but most Americans possess few details of their municipal or state budgets, let alone have any inkling of how $1,500,000,000,000 is spent (and squandered) annually by the DC-beltway crowd. Constituent requests for details concerning specific programs, usual receive a cordial letter accompanied by lengthy excerpts the Federal Register, Congressional transcripts or other indecipherable government documents … from which simple answers are often hard to come by.
Rather than painting his inquisitors as “bad guys”, the President should heed Sulzberger observation and ensure the public has complete details and metrics on each of his proposed cuts. After all, they have a right to know! In addition, he should have details of this year’s fiscal budget simplified into an easy to understand list of projected revenues and proposed expenditures … and then have a copy distributed to every public library in the country.
But, such a budget recap must not simply list gross appropriations for this department and that bureau. Rather it should itemize departmental budgets, including such proposed expenses as grants to study the flow rate of ketchup, monies to study the mating patterns of insects whose names can’t be pronounced, hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to former speakers of the House of Representatives, and thousands of other boondoggles (which in the past provided fodder for former Senator Proxmier’s “Golden Fleece Awards”) … and which, if broadly known, would create a public uproar which would be heard at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The resulting public outcry for additional spending cuts will be both swift and “specific”!
In the meantime, the Administration and Congress might consider; (a) implementing the Grace Commission recommendation; (b) giving the President a line-item veto; (c) utilizing of zero-based budgeting practices; (d) tapping private sector CEOs who have made and implemented the hard-nosed decisions relative to down-sizing bloated bureaucracies; and (e) to guarantee spending cuts won’t be “deferred” into the future, adopting a simple “up” or “down” vote on the President’s entire economic program, in a manner similar to the way military base closings have been handled.
A failure to be completely open and forthright with the American people will result in greater contempt and mistrust of our democratic institutions and could promote mistaken support for economic programs which are destined to fail, possibly triggering a potentially devastating depression … which might ultimately provide fertile ground for demagogues whose simplistic solutions might evolve into a populist mandate forever changing the American landscape.
