THE IRON'S HOT :

Bush Facing Test in Fight to Avert a Financial Crisis (RICHARD W. STEVENSON, June 23, 2002, NY Times)

The Republican-controlled House faces a politically painful decision in the coming week about whether to give in to increasingly urgent demands from the Bush administration for action to avert a government financial crisis, the latest example of the White House economic agenda's becoming trapped in partisan gridlock.

The administration is likely to succeed in its efforts to persuade the House to support an increase in the legal limit on the national debt, because failure to do so would leave the government unable to borrow enough money to meet all its obligations starting at the end of the week.

The reluctance of House Republicans to take up the issue, and the eagerness of Democrats in both chambers to emphasize it, is the newest skirmish in the fight over whether the tax cut pushed through Congress last year by President Bush has proved to be too expensive.

Why not go to the American people and say : "When we declared war on terrorism, we all knew that a time would come when all of us would be called upon to make sacrifices. For months now, American men and women have been fighting the enemy across the globe, making just such sacrifices, some of them even giving their lives. Today I come before you to ask for your sacrifice--your time has come.

As we now know from various reports in the media and internal reviews, part of the reason that al Qaeda was able to strike on our shores on September 11th was because even our national security services have grown bloated and wasteful to the point where their effectiveness is diminished. Meanwhile, the failure to seriously reduce the federal budget after the end of the Cold War has left us with an overall government that costs in excess of two trillion dollars ever year.

If you started reading the Federal Budget on January first and you did continued to read it for eight hours every day, as if just the reading of it were your full time job, never mind understanding it all or making judgments about what you're reading, you could not finish your task by the end of the year. No one in the executive knows what all's in the budget when we propose it. No one in the Congress knows what's in the budget when they pass it. We just keep piling money higher, hoping to demonstrate that we care, yet we have no idea as a nation how our money is being spent. We just know that many of the problems we originally targeted the money at--from education to health care to the environment--remain, most of them no better, or even worse, than they were when we started.

And so tonight, I ask the American people to make a tremendous sacrifice, one worthy of them and of a great nation at war. Tonight we ask Congress to pass legislation that will sunset, end, every program, agency, position, and tax provision of the federal government over the next five years--20% each year, with the specific budget items to be decided by a small working group from the respective congressional budget committees and the OMB.

Over the next five years, let's not kid ourselves, many of these departments and jobs and tax breaks will simply be reapproved--such is the nature of democratic politics. But we will give ourselves a unique opportunity to examine the massive Federal Government and to make cuts where they make sense. Our goal and the end of that five year period should be to reduce--in absolute, not relative, terms--the expenditures of the Federal government by 10%. As a part of this overall effort, and to demonstrate that the commitment to streamlining government begins here--we will be introducing plans to reduce the size of the executive branch down to six, or less, cabinet level positions--with only Interior, War, National Security, and Finance absolutely required.

This endeavor does not mark any lessening of our commitment to friends, neighbors and fellow citizens in need. It marks, instead, a moment we must all ask less of government and expect more of ourselves. It will be up to each of us to not only pick up the slack in our own financial situations but to lend a helping hand, through local churches, unions, citizens groups, and the like. It is a chance, perhaps our last, to restore a sense of community in America and to revitalize our civil society.

Since September 11th, we've received tens of thousands of letters from citizens asking what they can do to help. We've seen a spirit reborn that many thought was long dead in America, a spirit of giving and caring and sharing. Tonight I ask the American people to join together to make sure this spirit does not fade again, but instead resumes its place at the heart of our nation. Thank you and God Bless you and the United States of America.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2002 11:44 AM