True Relief? Deficit Reduction : Why add to the fiscal burden faced by this generation and those to follow?

House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders have been claiming since the night of Nov. 8 that the elections that put Congress under the GOP’s control were a mandate to enact their “contract with America,” among whose chief provisions is a hefty tax cut. While that claim has always been arguable--opinion surveys indicate that most voters had never heard of the contract before Gingrich, post-election, made it the centerpiece of the Republican legislative program--the implication that there is a widespread popular clamor for middle-class tax reductions is especially dubious.

The latest major opinion poll on the question, a survey conducted for the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, finds a majority of Americans believing that it’s more important to reduce the federal budget deficit than it is to cut taxes for the middle class. Everyone, of course, would like to pay less in taxes, and 37% of those polled said they preferred cutting taxes to cutting the deficit. But 55% in the survey said otherwise. For this majority, deficit reduction continues to be an imperative that outweighs the prospect of modest personal gain. Here is encouraging evidence of the inherent good sense of the American people.

The public debt of the United States currently stands at $4.7 trillion. That’s double what it was as recently as 1987 and almost five times larger than in 1981, when Ronald Reagan became President. Each American’s share of the deficit is about $17,000. The “contract with America” seeks tax cuts totaling about $200 billion over five years. But it’s silent on how they would be paid for. That silence suggests additional billions to be added to the staggering debt burden.

In 1981, interest payments on the debt came to less than $97 billion--an amount that at the time was regarded as appallingly high. In the current fiscal year they are about $235 billion, consuming around one-fifth of all federal outlays. Ill-timed and imprudent tax cuts would only increase the dreadful fiscal burden faced by this generation and those that will follow it. The Times Mirror poll is the latest sign of where the public stands on this crucial issue, and here the majority is assuredly right.