Time Is Right to Solve Key Issues

It’s difficult to think of a time when circumstances were more ideal for tackling thorny political issues than they are right now. The president has the luxury of doing what is right for the nation without worrying about how it would affect a reelection campaign. The Republicans have succeeded in preserving their congressional majorities--and won’t face election for two more years. There are no national or international emergencies to claim our attention, and no major campaign promises that require either party’s single-minded devotion to fulfill. And from all indications, the electorate seems to be saying: Cooperate and get the job done, and we will support you.

As a departing congressman, I’m sorry I’ll miss the golden opportunity these circumstances present to former colleagues and our president. This is a truly propitious time to seriously confront problems that have vexed us for years. If I had three wishes as I leave office, they would be that the White House and Congress take meaningful action on what I believe are the three most fundamental issues facing the nation: balancing the budget, reforming the campaign finance system and lowering levels of immigration. By making real progress on these concerns, we will also make it possible to address more successfully other big national problems.

Of these three issues, ending deficit spending is the easiest. Although budget deficits have plagued Washington for two decades, balancing the budget is no longer an unrealistic objective. Last year’s deficit--$107 billion--was smaller than any since 1981 and, measured in terms of the size of the economy, the smallest since 1974, so we are closer to reaching a balanced budget than we have been in years.

On top of that, we all know what steps have to be taken to balance the budget: slow the rate of growth of entitlement programs, curb defense spending and resist giving any tax cuts until we get the budget balanced. Relatively modest changes will do the trick. One example: by adjusting the consumer price index by 1.1 percentage points (as recently recommended by an advisory panel), we would save more than $500 billion over the next decade. Both parties should accept this change. Meanwhile, Democrats have to stop demagoguing on Medicare and Social Security, Republicans have to stop promising tax cuts, and both sides have to agree to base defense-spending decisions on meeting realistic threats to national security rather than on saving jobs that produce weapons systems we no longer need.

Balancing the budget has long been one of the top concerns of most Americans. If a reasonable plan that calls for modest and equitable spending cuts is backed by the president and leadership of both parties in Congress, it will meet with the approval of citizens of all political persuasions.

The need for campaign finance reform has been discussed for years, but it should finally be apparent to everyone that our system of funding elections has become so corrupt that changing it cannot be put off any longer. Admittedly a difficult and complex subject requiring more bipartisan cooperation and compromise than perhaps any other, this is nonetheless one matter that must be tackled before the small remaining amount of trust that the American people have in their system of government disappears entirely.

Cleaning up this cesspool must include not only eliminating the “soft money” contributions to the political parties that was the cause of so much well-deserved criticism during the recent presidential campaign. It also means outlawing special-interest contributions that leave too many members of Congress too often beholden to those interests rather than to the people whose votes sent them to Washington in the first place.

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One necessary ingredient in any true reform has to be some type of public financing, whether in the form of matching funds for small, individual contributions or reduced rates for mailing or broadcasting campaign materials. Public financing, which has allowed us to prohibit direct special-interest contributions in presidential elections, has worked well for more than 20 years now, and it is long past time to extend it to congressional elections.

Although both balanced budgets and campaign finance reform have been much talked about since the November elections, the third issue, immigration, has not. It needs to be. The overwhelming majority of Americans want us to do two things: stop illegal immigration and lower the annual rate of legal immigration. Unfortunately, Congress recently passed an immigration “reform” bill that does neither.

Currently, about 1.1 million immigrants (800,000 of them legal and 300,000 illegal) settle in the United States each year. This historically high level of immigration is a major and growing factor in problems that every one of us worries about: the overcrowding of schools, the growing demand for public health care and social services, the increased competition for jobs and its depressing effect on wages, and the burgeoning and unmanageable growth of many urban areas.

Without a reduction in the rate of immigration--legal and illegal--the population of the United States will double by the middle of the next century, to half a billion people. If our communities are already straining to meet the needs of people who are here now, how will they deal with twice as many? There is simply no way to get a handle on any of these problems if the number of Americans continues increasing at such a rapid rate.

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All three of these issues need to be solved not only for their own sake, but also to make it possible to fix other problems. If we end deficit spending, we will have more money available for both private and public investment, resulting in greater economic growth and higher standards of living. If we slow the rate of population growth by reducing the level of immigration, we will be able to tackle far more successfully the whole range of social problems confronting our nation. And if we reform our campaign system, we will have a government that is much less attentive to special interests and more responsive to the concerns of average Americans.

If we muster the political will to do these things, it will be the first time in recent memory that our government will have acted in a serious and responsible fashion to deal with major concerns that trouble all of us and that keep us from being as great a nation as we can be. That in turn will do much to reinvigorate our political system and rekindle the faith in government that the American people have lost over the years.

And that, it seems to me, is something worth wishing for.