Parsimonious Republican Programs May Spur Doubts About Party Priorities

WASHINGTON —  The Bush Administration’s calculated decision to meet three of America’s greatest problems--education, crime and drug use--with spending commitments worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge may be the start of the new political wars of the 1990s. Democrats and Republicans must now move on to the central debate: Are America’s social dilemmas largely the result of liberal sociology and its erosion of personal responsibility, or have skinflint conservative economics taken over blame?

Although the GOP starts with the edge, there are too many valid points on both sides for an easy victory. Just as the Democrats won’t easily break free of their permissive, spendthrift past, it’s hard to see the GOP ducking its image of being more interested in low millionaire tax brackets than child poverty. And it’s also tricky for Republicans to credibly demand “reform” after two decades of White House control.

Yet the stakes could hardly be higher. By 1992, if voters still perceive liberal sociology as America’s cultural weakness, and demand toughness and tradition as the remedy, the continuing crisis will be tantamount to “Reelect George Bush” advertising. However, if the public decides that streets are unsafe and children’s opportunities are collapsing because the Republican Administration won’t raise taxes that might interfere with Palm Beach yacht owners or Wall Street megadealers, then the nation’s plight will become a Democratic call to arms.

Recent history is with the Republicans, however--because refusal to commit more than modest new program funds in education, crime and drug abuse extends a proved GOP fiscal and electoral strategy. Toughness and values--an end to permissiveness, a return to basics in education, plus harsher sentences and penalties--have been carrying the day politically since the rise of Ronald Reagan, George C. Wallace and Richard M. Nixon in 1966-68. Voters have repeatedly responded to the conservative case. Weekend furloughs for first-degree murderers and marijuana legalization proposals--all liberal conceptual flaws and political embarrassments--still nurture skepticism of liberalism’s capacity for hard-boiled cultural solutions.

Republicans, then, not only have good reasons to oppose spending as a solution--better to keep values and toughness pre-eminent--but they also have Machiavellian reasons not to worry about the need for success. On the contrary, the greater the decay of education or breakdown of society or fear of drugs, the more likely the electorate is to embrace conservative arguments for additional authority to impose traditional values--and then some.

Earlier this month, for example, Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, attacked Bush’s just-released drug program as “a joke--a hoax on the public,” in part because of “its utter disregard for the ever-worsening conditions in our nation’s inner cities.” Yet within a few days, opinion polls began showing the public’s very different assessment: White House proposals didn’t crack down hard enough. Huge majorities favored quick searches and other new police measures--one poll even found a 62% majority saying they would give up “a few of the freedoms we have in this country” to reduce drug use. If anything, the GOP’s political ability to scoff at the ACLU is even greater now, with this intensified public drug concern, than during the 1988 presidential campaign.

Another great irony is also relevant--the contrast between abstract public support for higher federal outlays to deal with problems ranging from education and housing to health and drug use, and the electorate’s simultaneous skepticism of Democratic proposals for doing exactly this. Not only has a 20-year reputation for wasting taxpayers’ money, coupled with naive sociology, given liberalism a profound credibility problem, but it has also armored Republicans against Democratic attacks on the GOP’s reluctance to spend.

These perceptions, however, may be about to change. Despite their reputation, Democrats haven’t been all that spend-crazed recently, while high support for more spending in specific areas partly reflects the public’s awareness of how much federal “human resources” outlays have been curbed during the 1980s. Moreover, programs for the low-income groups prominent in today’s depressing crime, education and drug-abuse statistics have been notable casualties.

Yet the larger change would lie less in new public affection for the Democrats--or new middle-class empathy with the underprivileged--than in three growing doubts about GOP economic priorities.

First, by the time Bush’s term is up in January, 1993, the Republicans will have held the White House for 20 of the last 24 years. Because problems with education, crime and drugs have intensified during this period, one can wonder how much longer voters will let Republicans blame liberal “values” or softness. Besides, the economic polarization of the 1980s, with a 3%-5% of national income shifting from the bottom half of Americans to the top 1%, has become a factor in the lower groups’ disarray.

Second, GOP refusal to propose significant new outlays in response to such problems as crime, drugs and education--new spending in Bush’s 1989 education program is less than Michael Milken’s bail bond--is as much a matter of economic priorities as values. Camouflaging chintziness with values, after all, not only puts the Democrats on the cultural defensive, but gives the Republicans a philosophic framework for maintaining emphasis on the marketplace, a minimal role for government, low taxes on the wealthy and the resultant capital formation and investment. This priority may have been correct back in 1980, when incentive economics were still missing in Washington, but it may be less valid today.

And third, the GOP’s insistence on keeping low tax brackets rather than raising money to deal with acknowledged national problems has an upper-income bias that class-conscious Democratic politicians seem to be fingering with mounting enthusiasm. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York said recently, “It doesn’t take a genius, just a school parent or someone who lives in an unsafe neighborhood, to realize that billions of dollars that might be used for falling bridges and the drug war will end up in minks and Jaguars when the top rate drops to 28%.” Similarly, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that more Democratic politicians are going to be talking about the GOP’s refusal to spend money on crime, drug control and education so they can keep the under-taxed rich in penthouses and private schools. Where Cuomo trod carefully, others will tread demagogically.

This, then, is where the battle over solving national crises with unfunded government must lead--into what could be the decisive political and philosophic fight of the early ‘90s. If conservative cultural macho and Scrooge-like fiscal policy are no longer the answer, America’s political mood could change. But if today’s mood continues, then officers of the ACLU may want to check their passports.