Chuckling in the Graveyard

Over the weekend President Reagan invoked patriotic memories of Thomas Jefferson in issuing his so-called Economic Bill of Rights, which would supplant three centuries of majority rule in America with the tyranny of the minority. So much for no taxation without representation. Reagan would have it be no taxation--period--without appeasing the demagogues who masquerade as modern tax patriots and who in fact will not be appeased.

Then the President conjured up the image of TV game-show hostess Vanna White to demonstrate to Congress that he really means business about no new taxes. A tax bill would get vetoed faster than Vanna could turn the letters V-E-T-O, the President vowed. Congress might face up to Jeffersonian arguments, or even Clint Eastwood, but how could it withstand Vanna’s vengeance?

The Vanna line got a chuckle from Reagan’s audience. Similar wisecracks will elicit approval from other friendly crowds through the summer as Reagan stumps the country in search of dreamy economic good ol’ days that never really existed. But the country is not well served by a President who reduces critical national problems to sly winks and belly laughs.

This is not glorious 1776 or bucolic 1910. This is 1987, and the reality of 1987 is another budget deficit approaching $200 billion and record trade deficits. Public and private U.S. debt has doubled this decade to $9 trillion.

The reality of 1987 is that this Administration as responsible for more federal debt than all other Administrations in U.S. history put together. The President righteously flails at the debt and acts as if his Administration had nothing to do with it. Could someone else have been President all that time?

The reality of 1987 is that the Democratic leadership in Congress has, at considerable political risk, proposed a modest tax increase of $19 billion to make a token reduction in the 1988 deficit. But it is an important symbol--a signal that the nation is not content to be propped up by foreign money and will assume responsibility for its debts.

Still, the President of the United States stumps the country telling the citizens that all will be well if only he can impose budget-reform gimmicks to wrest the power to tax and spend away from Congress. “It’s always the American people who are expected to foot the bill with higher taxes,” he said, seemingly appalled by that concept.

But who else? Who else will pay for an extravagant defense buildup that continues virtually apace? Who else will pay for the luxury of tax cuts for the rich that have all but destroyed the progressive income tax in this country? Who else finally will have to undergo sacrifice to halt the nation’s intolerable descent into the maelstrom of debt?

In the past the country could indulge Reagan for his anti-government rhetoric, because in the end he usually was willing to strike a compromise. Today, however, the President is unbending in his hostility toward government as he opposes any tax increase at any cost. Ronald Reagan seeks a legacy as the President who slew the government monster. But in doing so he stubbornly clings to a policy that threatens the economic freedom of future generations of Americans by saddling them with the monstrous debt of the 1980s--the era of borrow and spend, borrow and spend.