By Congressman Wally Herger
Recent troubles in the stock market, due in part to investor jitters over America’s enormous debt, have at long last awakened a sense of responsibility here in Washington, and it appears now that Congress and the Reagan Administration will hammer out some compromise on real deficit reduction. This past week, Congressional leaders travelled to the While House to begin negotiations on how best and how much to reduce our nation’s staggering budget deficit. Many in Congress, including myself, recognize that our outrageous $148 billion federal deficit requires a reduction greater than the $23 billion mandated by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction law.
But already some voices in Congress are seeking to place the burden and responsibility of deficit reduction solely on the White House. We have heard a great deal of rhetoric from the Congressional leadership in the past several weeks about forcing the President to “work with the Congress” as though President Reagan has spent his tenure cloistered at the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, stonewalling, hiding, and never compromising one iota. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Every year the President sends a budget to the Congress which the big spenders then declare “dead-on-arrival”, and reject out of hand, ‘opting instead for their own version with higher domestic spending. President Reagan is then forced to swallow the free-spending budgets the Congress sends him. Let’s be honest; it’s the big spenders that won’t cooperate. It’s the big-spenders that have been stonewalling.
When one hears such “cooperation” talks from the Congressional leadership, one should immediately read, “If the President will agree to tax increase…..” or “if the President will only do we want him to do”. In truth, the tax and spend crowd does not want President Reagan to cooperate, they want him to capitulate. Cooperation in deficit reduction is a two-way street. If the big-spenders expect cooperation from the President on taxes, they should first be prepared to make real cuts in our bloated federal budget, rather than the smoke and mirrors so many of the less responsible of our leaders prefer to real fiscal restraint. Blaming federal deficits on President Reagan’s reluctance to raise taxes, a reluctance shared by the vast majority of Americans, is not enough anymore. The Conress must show some responsibility.
The American people sent a message in 1980 and again in 1984 that they would no longer tolerate high taxes and runaway federal spending. Now, in part at least, the stock market is saying the same. Now is a time for bold action to reduce federal spending, and not for the retreat a tax increase would signal. Make no mistake about it the big-spenders want increased taxes, the President wants reduced spending, but before we put a package together, let’s at least be fair if Congressional free-spenders insist on being heard, they must also be prepared to listen.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 20, 1987
