COLUMN RIGHT / LLEWELLYN H. ROCKWELL JR. : Bush Finally Comes Up With a Winner : ‘Debt check-off’ would raise taxpayer consciousness and may lead to budget democracy.

Despite what we might charitably describe as an uncertain record over the past 3 1/2 years, the Bush Administration is now supporting an idea that could reduce federal spending, the budget deficit and the national debt, and maybe even encourage a taxpayer revolt.

This idea, announced by President Bush at the Republican National Convention, is the “debt check-off,” in which we could check a box on our tax form to allocate 10% of our payment to lower the national debt (and thus lower spending), without increasing our taxes.

By reducing the debt 1.2% a year, the check-off would not exactly slay the $4-trillion debt monster, but it’s a start.

Unfortunately, Bush wants to exempt from any cutting Social Security, interest on the national debt and deposit insurance. Social Security, our biggest welfare program, must be off limits, we’re told, even though the elderly are, as a group, the richest Americans.

Interest on the debt cannot be cut because that would mean a partial default on U.S. government bonds. Yet holders of private, state and municipal issues face this threat. Why should federal creditors be exempt? It would make them less likely to lend, you say? The feds would have trouble going into debt? Don’t throw us into that briar patch, Br’er Bush. And exempting deposit insurance means we should brace ourselves for an S & L-scale bailout for criminally imprudent banks.

Even with these exemptions, however, the debt check-off is a great idea, so naturally the Treasury opposed it, for it would raise taxpayer consciousness.

That’s why left-liberal Princeton economist Alan Blinder criticized Bush for proposing “a public referendum by voting with your tax dollars.” And what’s wrong with that? It’s unequal: “Poor people,” he says, would have “no vote. I would have many votes. And some of those people down in Houston would have even more votes.”

Yes, and I’d have fewer votes than Blinder. So what? Those who pay more should have more say. Blinder calls this “profoundly undemocratic” because it “invites the haves to take away from the have-nots.” In fact, it allows the looted to reclaim a little control from the looters.

One of the ironies of modern democracy is how undemocratic it becomes when combined with government intervention. When private property is insecure, democracies become redistribution rackets. That’s why so many special interests get rich today while passing the costs on to the rest of society.

Only the milk industry, for example, favors milk subsidies. Only Chrysler, its unions and its bankers favored a bailout of that company. Such programs could not stand up to the bracing test of budget democracy. Under such a plan, a tax form might include the following items:

1. The government should send my money to:

a) Russia; b) China; c) The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission; d) My bank account.

2. My money should fund:

a) Social workers; b) Spies; c) Bureaucrats; d) My children’s education.

3. The government should use my money to subsidize:

a) Export industries; b) Porno artists; c) Banks; d) Space stations; e) None of the above.

4) The government should:

a) Own and manage 32% of the U.S. land area; b) Favor big business over small business through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and other anti-market regulatory agencies; c) Discriminate against the majority; d) Tell us to use more condoms and less tobacco: e) Provide for the national defense.

If given a chance, there can be little doubt that Americans would restore something like limited, constitutional government. In fact, every year, taxpayers should be sent plain-English copies of the budget. We should be able to check-off the items we want to buy with our tax dollars.

Under the new system, voter-taxpayers would be able to answer an economically important question: On the margin, what’s the best use for our money? People in California may like paying for welfare in Alabama, but do they like it more than keeping their own money?

Plebiscitary budgeting isn’t the ideal, of course. But since the Founding Fathers have long since been discarded as irrelevant, it’s a good second-best solution. My pencil’s sharpened. How about yours?