Gore is betting that Americans will embrace the status quo, while Bush thinks he can sell his brand of change. The contrasts emerge clearly through the candidates’ respective budget plans. There will, of course, be other issues: schools, gun control, the Supreme Court. But a president’s influence on these is modest. No president can easily improve education, which depends mainly on parents, teachers and local school boards. We can regulate guns more or less, but violence (which is what people want to stop) is harder to control. As for the court, a president’s impact is chancy; it rises with the number of vacancies and falls with the tendency of new justices to surprise the presidents who nominate them.
The budget, absorbing a fifth of the national income, is different. The way a president articulates his priorities can set the agenda and tone of national debate. This is where the Bush-Gore contrasts matter most. With today’s policies, budget surpluses will total about $4.5 trillion from 2001 through 2010, projects the Congressional Budget Office. Here’s how each campaign envisions using the surpluses (all budget figures are for the decade ending in 2010):
Gore: He’d devote about $2.8 trillion of the surpluses to repaying the publicly held federal debt, which was $3.6 trillion in 1999. He’d raise spending by about $900 billion and cut taxes by $500 billion. He would expand Social Security benefits for widows, at a cost of $100 billion. His biggest spending program would be a Medicare prescription-drug benefit; the CBO puts the cost at $338 billion. Health care would get $140 billion more, mainly to expand insurance for the uninsured. There’s also $115 billion for education, $120 billion for the environment, $50 billion for defense and $50 billion for a grab bag of programs. His biggest tax proposal would provide tax credits for contributions to retirement savings accounts.
Bush: His income-tax cut would cost $1.3 trillion. Personal retirement accounts under Social Security, a concept that Bush has endorsed in principle, could cost $700 billion in the first decade. Defense gets $45 billion for salaries and research; but this might simply be a down payment once Bush does a “strategic review.” There’s $97 billion for health care–mainly for the uninsured–and $26 billion for education. Other programs (the environment, crime) get about $54 billion. New spending totals about $222 billion. However, Bush assumes he can save almost $200 billion by eliminating inefficiencies. If so, he’d have about $2 trillion left for debt reduction. (Both Bush and Gore would face higher interest costs than under the CBO’s “baseline” projection–perhaps $300 billion for Gore, $500 billion for Bush.)
Let’s note the obvious: all surplus projections are iffy, and each campaign’s numbers are probably self-serving. Bush optimistically assumes, for example, that he can pay for a Medicare drug benefit through savings from a major reform of Medicare. Hmm. His defense estimates have a similar squishiness. On the other hand, Bush’s advisers think Gore may have underestimated the cost of his Social Security benefit and tax-savings plan by hundreds of billions of dollars. Despite these uncertainties, the campaign’s budget figures are still revealing.
By my lights, each program has pluses and minuses. Gore’s strong point is his emphasis on reducing the federal debt. Interest payments now represent about 13 percent of federal spending. The lower they go, the easier it will be to afford the retirement of the baby boomers. Bush’s tax cut strikes me as too big and too soon–and too tilted toward the very rich. True, federal taxes are now almost 21 percent of national income, the highest since World War II. A tax cut may someday be needed (if there’s a recession) or justified (if surpluses grow). It’s just not now.
Bush’s appeal is that he might break the stalemate on retirement programs. It isn’t enough to reduce the federal debt. When baby boomers retire, Social Security and Medicare spending will explode. This will impose a huge burden on workers, whose taxes mainly pay for benefits. Clinton avoided these issues, and his proposals for higher retirement benefits would worsen the long-term strains. Gore is doing the same. Bush isn’t just embracing personal retirement accounts. He’d convene a bipartisan commission to refashion Social Security and Medicare. He says that–unlike Clinton, who had several commissions–he’d listen to the results. Finally, some of Gore’s other proposals seem wasteful: costly political gimmicks designed mostly to confer bragging rights (“look how much we’re spending on schools”).
The best features of each program would, if spliced, make a splendid platform for governing. The trouble is that the election doesn’t offer that choice. “They had their chance,” Bush said two weeks ago. “They have not led. We will.” Here is the campaign’s essence. Gore sounds populist, even liberal, themes, but the main aim is to instill anxiety and fear that Bush’s “leadership”– preparing for future (but abstract) problems, introducing “risky schemes” –would spoil prosperity and America’s good mood. Gore’s response is to project himself as an expedient conservative, guarding the status quo and hoping that’s what voters want.
