Chairman Bill's Big Blue Book
When President Clinton's
budget for fiscal year 1999 came out on Feb. 2, we were all engrossed in
l'affaire Lewinsky and the spin the White House was putting on
it--right-wing conspiracy, executive privilege, Talmudic definitions of
adultery, and so on. Perhaps interest in that subject has now abated
sufficiently to allow us to turn our attention to the budget. I propose here to
comment not on the policy it contains but on the rhetoric with which it is
presented--on the spin the Clinton administration puts on its policy.
What is
most striking to a person who has been reading budgets for a long time is how
far the cult of presidential personality has progressed. In the past the budget
(I refer here to the main book titled Budget and not the other five
volumes that come with it) typically had two parts. One was the budget message
of the president, written in the first person and signed by the president.
Readers knew there was going to be a fair measure of boasting and self-serving
in that section. But most of the book consisted of chapters about the functions
of government, with such prosaic titles as "National Defense" or "Agriculture."
These were written in the third person, had lots of probably boring facts, and
one could learn a lot from them. Of course, they reflected the point of view of
the administration, but the reader didn't have the feeling that he was
constantly being urged to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. The president was scarcely
mentioned.
The budget still has the president's message and a section
organized according to the functions of government. But now, inserted between
these two parts is a long section--this year it's 132 pages--still pretending
to explain the whole thing but explaining it as having sprung full-blown from
the brow of the president. The section has inspirational chapter heads such as
"Preparing the Nation for a New American Century" and "Creating a Bright
American Future."
Each
chapter and subchapter in this section starts with a quotation from previous
utterances of President Clinton, set in italics and enclosed in a box. These
quotations are of a banality that is hard to believe. For example, we have
this:
Americans want the best
for our children. We want them to live out their dreams, empowered with the
tools they need to make the most of their lives and to build a future where
America remains the world's beacon of hope and freedom and opportunity. To do
this, we must all make improving the quality of education in America one of our
highest priorities.
There is
an irresistible reminder here of Chairman Mao's little red book, except Mao's
dicta were more pointed.
In these 132 pages there are, by my count, 113
uses of the word "president." (I include nine cases of the word "his" used in
close proximity to and referring to the president.) And what is the president
doing on these occasions? Of course, he is working and proposing and having
visions and making commitments. But he is not only working, he is, in some
instances, working "hard"--to expand health care coverage and improve the
nation's health, to improve education and the lives of working families, to
eliminate fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, and to crack down on violent youth
gangs.
The
president also has "initiatives":
The Brownfields
Initiative
The Water Quality
Initiative
The Presidential Initiative
to Increase Seat Belt Use Nation-wide
The President's Initiative
on Drugs, Driving and Youth
The President's Education
Technology Initiative
The President's 1997
Antiterrorism/Counterterrorism/Security Initiative
The President's America
Reads Initiative
The
President's Initiative on Landmines
This is
truly a president whose eye is on the sparrow.
Depending on your mood, this is either irritating or
laughable. But I cannot believe that it is helpful to the president. The
incredibility infects and pollutes everything else in the budget.
These
pages are filled to overflowing with the names of programs to be created or
increased. Each of these has to have a name with Capital Letters, and every
capital letter has to be part of an acronym. (My favorite is NEXTEA. Anyone who
knows what that is should win money on Ben Stein's quiz show. Actually, it
stands for National Economic Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act.) The
mind reels reading about all these good things that are being done for us.
What one would like to see is some listing of
programs that are being reduced or not being introduced. After all, to govern
is to choose, and to budget is especially to choose. We cannot appreciate the
reason for the things that are to be done unless we can compare them with
things that are not to be done. Why do we have a Seat Belt Initiative and not a
Smoke Detector Initiative? (Maybe there is a Smoke Detector Initiative, and I
missed it.) True, there are some cuts in expenditures and personnel. They are
all the result of what we used to call minimizing waste, fraud, and abuse and
what is now called the Vice President's Reinventing Government Program. There
are no identifiable places where anyone is asked to give up anything.
Well,
there are two exceptions to that. The American people, especially young people,
are asked to give up smoking--but to go on paying hefty taxes on cigarettes. By
accounting maneuvers not worth describing here, this abstinence will enable the
federal government to increase spending on a variety of programs, through an
instrument modestly called the Fund for America.
The second exception is that we are to forgo using the
prospective budget surplus for tax cuts or expenditure increases (other than
those proposed by the president) "until we have a solution to the long-term
financing challenge facing Social Security." It is here that we have the
greatest need for more explanation.
The
formulation offered gives rise to the ridiculous table showing, for years
beginning in 1999, an excess of receipts over outlays, exactly balanced by an
item called Reserve Pending Social Security Reform, and a resulting
surplus/deficit that is exactly zero. By that logic we had a zero deficit every
year for the past 30 years, except that the "reserve" was negative.
Moreover, the little word "until" contains a
number of ambiguities. Some have interpreted it as meaning that the surplus
would be used to solve the financial problems of Social Security. That
has now been denied by the Office of Management and Budget. Which leaves open
the question of the president's intention for the use of the surplus after some
other solution, such as cutting Social Security benefits or raising payroll
taxes, has been found. Would we then be free to spend whatever surplus there is
in the unified budget? Or would we still want to apply some of that surplus to
reducing the federal debt accumulated during the 30 years of deficits? Could we
start spending it even if the discovered solution for Social Security's
long-run problem didn't start to have a financial impact for another 20 years?
In other words, is the "reserved" surplus to be part of any long-term fiscal
program or only a carrot to be used to induce a solution to Social Security,
after which the carrot can be eaten?
I raise these questions not
to disagree with what may be the president's program but to illustrate the
inadequacy of the budget as an explanation of it.
When I told a friend of my
problems with the budget as an explanatory document, he replied, "But you're
the only person who reads it." That may be true. But 15,000 copies were
printed.
