Paging Ross Perot

Here’s one thing John F. Kerry and George W. Bush have in common -- neither is sufficiently concerned about those growing federal deficits and their threat to the economy. Where is Ross Perot when we need him?

Both candidates say they have a plan to halve the deficit over the next four years. But as exasperated moderator Charles Gibson pointed out in Friday’s debate, it’s hard to see how Bush or Kerry would get us from here to there.

Bush deserves being singled out for getting us into this mess. It’s fair for him to point out that the recession and the war on terror were bound to render meaningless the long-term, multitrillion-dollar surplus estimates that greeted him when he was sworn in. But he should be condemned for sticking with ambitious tax cuts that were billed as a rebate of those surpluses, even as the plus signs vaporized. It is one of the more damaging examples of the administration’s unwillingness to alter course in the face of altered circumstances. This year’s deficit will exceed $400 billion, and the government’s overall debt could nearly double, from $4.3 trillion today to $8 trillion, over the next decade.

Bush’s rebates to the wealthiest taxpayers failed to deliver the economic stimulus he promised, partly because they weren’t really designed with that in mind. He insists on making them all permanent nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the president has failed to impose any spending discipline on his Republican Congress. He has not vetoed any spending measures and strongly backed the drug-company windfall in the Medicare expansion and the outrageously wasteful farm legislation of 2002.

In Friday’s debate, Bush failed to acknowledge any meaningful mistakes, allowing only that he regretted some of his appointments. That list probably includes Paul O’Neill, his first Treasury secretary. But Bush’s mistake wasn’t appointing O’Neill. It was failing to listen to his warnings that the nation couldn’t afford Bush’s tax cuts. Bush’s economic team would like us now to believe that born-again spending discipline and rosy economic projections will magically cut the deficit by half in a second term.

The Kerry campaign has not capitalized on Bush’s financial mismanagement as forcefully as it should, mainly because it has allowed its own wish list to get in the way of a clear pledge of fiscal responsibility. Kerry would roll back the tax cuts Bush awarded to households earning more than $200,000 a year, but the savings would be more than offset by the cost of the senator’s healthcare and education proposals. Kerry would still have to pay for extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone else, plus some additional middle-class credits that he has repeatedly promised. His deficit-halving plan ends up being as unrealistic as the president’s.

That’s disappointing because Kerry at least plays lip service to the notion that deficits pose a long-term threat to the economy, as the government consumes a larger share of available credit. Kerry would be better able to associate himself with the prosperity of the Clinton years, and to rebut charges that he is a tax-and-spend liberal, if he acknowledged that getting the government’s finances in order may have to come before new tax cuts and higher spending.

Kerry and Bush are also equally guilty of not addressing the long-term viability of Social Security and Medicare. But to get candidates and voters to focus on doom-and-gloom projections, we may just have to call Perot back into the fray.