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The Deficit: Bringing Federal Spending Under Control : Congress continues to throw cash down the rat hole of open-ended entitlements. We need aggressive reform and the ouster of career politicians.

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The Times has invited the two leading candidates in the hotly contested race for Congress in the 24th District, which includes the southwest San Fernando Valley, to write on several issues before the election.

Incumbent Democrat Anthony Beilenson has been a congressman since 1977. Republican Rich Sybert was state director of planning and research from 1991 to 1993.

For this article they were asked if the federal budget deficit is a significant problem, and if so, what should be done to attack it.

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It’s time to put the deficit problem into plain English: The professional politicians of both parties are misusing our money and robbing our children’s future by their inability to stop borrowing or to cut spending.

Deficit is a fancy word for spending money you don’t have. Congress does this by borrowing, which increases the size of government, crowds out productive investment and avoids fiscal discipline on the part of our elected representatives. Worst of all, it does so on the backs of tomorrow’s taxpayers--our children.

If we were spending borrowed money on productive investment, perhaps it could be justified. Unfortunately, Congress has been spending hundreds of billions of dollars down a rat hole: wasteful, open-ended social welfare programs that pay for consumption today at the expense of investment and jobs tomorrow.

How did this happen? Partisan liberals are now trying to rewrite history by claiming the cause of the deficit was the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s. But just like the Kennedy tax cuts two decades earlier, the Reagan cuts spurred economic growth and actually doubled federal tax revenues. The problem was that Congress then spent even more, and locked into place “entitlement” programs like welfare that mushroomed out of control.

Unfortunately, Congress is still taxing and spending. The Clinton “deficit reduction” program that Congress passed by the thinnest of margins last summer is nothing of the sort. By putting all the tax increases up front and the purported spending cuts years away, Congress passed a “deficit reduction” bill that is actually nothing more than a tax hike.

In fact, under Congress’ own projections, the deficit shoots up again after only a few years. We have merely cut the rate of growth, but still $1.2 trillion will be added to the national debt between 1994 and 1999. Congress temporarily forced the deficit down in the economically most damaging way possible--by a huge tax increase that threatens to cripple the private sector and cost thousands of jobs. It shrank the private sector instead of the government.

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In the San Fernando Valley, already reeling from recession, defense cuts and the earthquake, these tax hikes will drain more than $1.6 billion from our congressional district alone. The state of California overall will see $25 billion siphoned off to other states. It is a wonder that any California member of Congress voted for this self-wounding package. Ours did.

Meanwhile, domestic spending is out of control and the Administration is proposing new spending programs like midnight basketball, arts-and-crafts counselors for prisoners and swimming pools in Iowa. Congressional leaders use a good name--”the crime bill” or “welfare reform”--to try to pass pork-laden special interest spending bills instead.

When presented with a bill that actually began to make modest cuts in spending, the bipartisan Penny-Kasich bill, Congress voted it down, 219 to 213. And when presented with an alternative budget process that might open up debate and lead to real cuts, the “A to Z” plan that allows open debate and floor votes on any budget item, congressional leaders went into a panic.

We have to cut the deficit, and we have to do it now. I support a line-by-line review of the budget to weed out waste, fraud and abuse. I favor a freeze on social welfare programs and real reform to cut costs. I favor a line-item veto, a balanced budget amendment and significant cuts in Congress’ own spending. I favor returning government to basics--safe streets, decent schools, good roads. That is what we should be spending taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars on, not pork and perks.

Career politicians like the incumbent Mr. Beilenson will tell us that they are for deficit reduction. But their votes tell us differently. Just like welfare, where he is suddenly (at election time) a born-again conservative, or illegal immigration, where he talks tough but does nothing, the incumbent has consistently voted against any reductions in special interest spending or in curbing his own spending. He opposes or has voted against:

* The line-item veto

* The balanced budget amendment

* The “A to Z” budget process

* Penny-Kasich deficit reduction

* Any reduction in Congress’ own budget of nearly $2 billion, including staff, salaries, free mail or his own $1.5-million pension. In fact, Mr. Beilenson has voted to raise his own salary 10 times while refusing to cut taxes.

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This is more than lack of leadership. This is pure hypocrisy in coming into the district and saying one thing but doing something very different once back in Washington. Unfortunately, it is a story that is all too typical of career politicians who look after their own interests first. This corrupt and self-serving system will never change until we change the people who are in it.

I have a 16-month-old daughter, Stephanie. Like every parent, I am full of hopes and dreams for her happiness and success. Today’s entrenched politicians are stealing from her future, and from the future of every child in America, by continuing to borrow and spend when we don’t have it. We have to start over. It’s time for a change.

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