Time for Some Action, Not More Meetings

Is there anything more petty than a politician arguing about the process of making policy?

Excluded last week from President Bush’s feel-good economic summit in Waco, Texas, leading Democrats still had their moment in the spotlight when the national press asked them what they would have said had Bush invited them to the meeting.

And one by one, starting with House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, top Democrats trooped before the microphones and solemnly declared they would have asked Bush ... for another meeting. A meeting with everyone invited and “everything on the table.”

More meetings: Now there’s a rallying cry for workers worried about their jobs and retirees watching their 401(k) plans melt.

Asked what they might say at such a meeting, should the president agree to one, Democrats demurred. “I think we make a mistake if we announce ahead of such a possible meeting what ... we think ought to be done,” Gephardt insisted on CNN.

This certainly qualifies as a unique strategy for an opposition party just before an election. On every other conceivable issue--prescription drugs, energy, Social Security--Gephardt and other Democrats are happy, eager, even desperate, to announce what they think should be done. From coast to coast, Democratic candidates are emptying their wallets on television ads to tell voters what they think ought to be done. But on the economy, the country’s top domestic concern, mum’s the word.

The subtext in all this isn’t too hard to read. It turns on a single word: taxes. Democrats understand it’s virtually impossible to articulate a coherent alternative to Bush’s economic agenda without reclaiming some of the revenue from his $1.35-trillion tax cut, both to reduce the federal deficit and to invest in programs, such as education and scientific research, that they believe will strengthen long-term growth.

But many Democrats (especially in the party’s congressional leadership) are extremely reluctant--”terrified” might be a better word--to propose retrenching the tax cut unless Bush is on board. Hence the talk of another meeting to formulate a new economic plan.

Democrats have in mind the precedent of 1990, when the Democratic Congress pressured the first President Bush into a budget summit where Bush repudiated his “no new taxes” pledge from 1988 and accepted a tax increase as part of a sweeping budget package. Together with the deficit reduction plan that President Clinton pushed through in 1993, that package eventually contributed to the economic boom of the 1990s--but it also fractured Bush’s coalition and alienated conservatives heading into the 1992 campaign. Democrats wouldn’t mind a repeat.

Well, here’s a bulletin for the party brain trust: George W. Bush also remembers what happened to his father. And that means he’d probably appoint Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Supreme Court before he’d convene another budget summit. If congressional Democrats are waiting until Bush invites them to the Camp David retreat in Maryland to share their vision on how to invigorate the economy, they will be keeping their light under a bushel for a very long time. Like forever.

With Democrats muted, the economic dialogue has been more of a monologue. Bush blames the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the stock market scandals and a slowdown that began under President Clinton for the sluggish economy. Democrats don’t point to the long-term threat of renewed deficits--even though Robert E. Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury secretary and the party’s most respected economic voice, recently identified the deficits as “once again the biggest threat to the economy”--because that would raise the question of what they intend to do about them.

Likewise, Bush is increasingly blaming congressional overspending for the return of federal deficits. Democrats last week didn’t emphasize the role of his tax cut--even though the administration’s own figures show it is the single largest factor in the long-term collapse of the federal balance sheet--because it would raise the question of what they intended to do about that. And for now, the answer is: nothing.

If Democrats wanted to articulate an economic alternative, they might not have to look too far to find one. Consider these key elements of the economic landscape today: mounting federal deficits, an uncertain stock market and a recovery proceeding too slowly to generate jobs. (The U.S. has lost an estimated 1.6 million jobs since Bush took office.) With unemployment up, wage growth is down. And if economic growth accelerates, increasing the demand for credit, the looming federal deficits will force up interest rates, short-circuiting the recovery.

All of that is eerily similar to the conditions the first President Bush left behind. The economy faces some new challenges, particularly the fallout from the stock market scandals. But the problems now resemble those under the last Bush closely enough that Democrats could argue for adapting the solutions Clinton proposed in 1993: deficit reduction coupled with trade promotion and targeted investments in areas such as education to encourage long-term growth.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) has made the most progress in updating the Clinton approach into a contemporary plan. In a recent speech, Lieberman called for capping the growth of overall domestic spending and freezing the next installments of the Bush tax cut aimed at the highest earners. (Under that proposal, no one, not even the wealthy, would pay more in taxes than they do today.) With the money saved, Lieberman would reduce the deficit, invest in education, provide tax incentives to spur scientific research and try to resuscitate the Internet economy with a coordinated effort to deploy broadband technology. “In this century,” Lieberman said, “focused government investments in education, training and innovation will drive economic growth worth many times their initial expense.”

Most Republicans, of course, would say tax cuts spur growth more. That’s an argument worth having. But right now, there is no argument because so few Democrats are joining Lieberman in saying publicly what almost all believe privately: that it won’t be possible to stabilize the federal budget or accelerate long-term growth without reconsidering the next stages of the Bush tax cut.

Until Democrats bite that bullet, they’ll be left talking about meetings. Probably to empty rooms.