Plain Talk Is What Voters Need to Hear : Proposal to question candidates about deficit is worth trying

We’ll be hearing a lot of oratory this week about the steps that must be taken to spur economic growth and improve public education, about the need to make health care and housing more affordable and accessible, about the problems of the cities and the worries of the suburbs, now home to half the population. What we won’t be hearing a lot of, from the Democratic convention in New York or the Republicans when they meet next month in Houston or from Ross Perot if he decides to make his candidacy official, are serious ideas addressed to the most urgent domestic issue of all: What can and must be done to control the federal budget deficit.

The lack of concrete proposals will be obscured by the usual ritual denunciations of waste, fraud and abuse in the way the government spends public monies. But waste, fraud and abuse, while deplorable and deserving of extirpation, are only modestly to blame for the quadrupling of the federal debt that has occurred since 1981. The deficit grows ever larger simply because year after year the government spends more money than it raises. It makes up the difference by borrowing. What it borrows must of course be paid back, which in practice requires still more borrowing, deepening total indebtedness.

Here are some of the consequences: The federal deficit now exceeds $4 trillion, up from just under $1 trillion in 1981. This year’s deficit is projected at $400 billion. The government, able to pay whatever interest rates the market demands, gets first crack at available credit. The government thus not only sets the interest rates that affect everyone, it also consumes hundreds of billions in credit that could otherwise go for home mortgages or business expansion or loans to finance college educations. About one dollar in seven that the government now spends goes to service the federal debt. This year’s interest charges exceed $210 billion.

These are the bare dimensions of a debilitating national disease. Unless it can be controlled there’s little chance that other social ills can be treated. What do the presidential candidates propose to do--specifically and not just rhetorically--about controlling the deficit? So far none has said. Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) have a sensible proposal for finding out.

They want each of the presidential candidates to agree to appear one at a time on television to talk only about dealing with the deficit. They want the candidates to be questioned by two respected senators who have chosen not to run for reelection, Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who is on the Budget Committee. In short, they want them in a forum where concrete ideas for dealing with the deficit will be sought in place of the generalities, platitudes and evasions that candidates usually are advised to stick to.

Graham and Danforth say that Gov. Bill Clinton has agreed to their proposal, that Perot has equivocated, that President Bush has yet to be heard from. One out of three is a start; three out of three is vital. The people have a right to hear plain talk about the deficit from the candidates--and that must include all of them.