Editorial: Moderates find their voice

Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005 | 9:22 a.m.

There is nothing wrong with Congress trying to cut billions of dollars from the national budget. In fact, projections show that enormous and immediate cuts are urgently needed if the government is to avoid a fiscal collapse in the near future. But there is something wrong when Congress simultaneously proposes spending cuts that primarily harm poor people, and tax cuts that primarily benefit wealthy people.

We believe there needs to be a plan for this country that acknowledges our shockingly high national debt (nearly $8 trillion now) and our currently unavoidable reliance on deficit spending. The plan should have twin goals -- stop passing crippling debt on to future generations and make achieving solvency a shared responsibility.

This has not been the philosophy under the Bush administration, which inherited a budget with sufficient annual surpluses to actually pay off the national debt within 10 or 12 years, and to put enough money aside to prepare for the retirements of members of the baby-boom generation. Under the Republican administration, and a Republican Congress, the funding reserves have been replaced by a mounting debt.

If left up to Bush and conservative members of Congress, most responsibility for paying off all of this debt would be placed on future generations and today's low- and moderate-income families. This was evident last week when the House took up a bill to cut $51 billion over the next five years. This represents a pittance compared to the trillions in debt that will be inherited by future generations. And the plan for cutting even this small amount called for poor families with children to shoulder the greater share of responsibility.

A few years ago, when President Bush had a majority of Americans believing he had all of the answers, this bill likely would have been passed. But with Bush severely weakened now by successive blunders in foreign and domestic policy, moderate Republicans in Congress are trying to salvage some of their party's reputation.

Enough of them balked at this bill to force the House leadership to postpone continued discussion of it until this week. Even when the leadership removed the bill's provision to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, the moderate GOP members held their ground, citing the impacts on poor people. Meanwhile last week moderate Republicans in the Senate balked at approving another round of Bush tax cuts worth $70 billion for the wealthy.

Last week's action in the House and Senate gives hope that the majority party is beginning to break away from marching in lockstep with President Bush. We would like to see the moderates continue to raise their new-found voice. We've seen too much of a tilt toward wealthy people over the past five years when it comes to federal tax policies and spending cuts. Let's now have a plan for fiscal responsibility that emphasizes fairness for all segments of our population.