Once again I received the Courier, the magazine of the Concord Coalition, and once again they had absolutely no mention whatsoever of the possibility of cuts in the exorbitant levels of military spending. They have also come out with "Ten criteria for balancing the budget" which seem to justify this glaring omission. The ninth criteria is that any proposed budget should be viable within the present setup of Congress. Well, that would also explain why they insist on The Unbalanced Budget Amendment proposed by Newt and company which uses dedicated revenue funds to subsidize the budget. The trouble is that an honest balanced budget debate would have the military budget along with corporate welfare staring back at the public like 800 pound gorillas literally screaming for cuts; the last congress had zero floor votes on military spending cuts [ "conservatives" want even more!] and next to nothing on corporate welfare. This despite the fact that military spending is the only significant[over a third of the current general budget] item of the general budget that garners majority public support for cuts.
What the Concord Coalition fail to recognize is, that despite intense media manipulation, the general public does recognize one principle totally overlooked by the Republicans: Shared Sacrifice. Until they make at least token efforts to bring their wealthy sponsors on board to help with the task of balancing the budget - even the dishonest one which will ring up more new debt - they won't gain the support of the electorate. I remind the pundits that it was I that gave similar election advice to Bob Dole which was blithely ignored - to his detriment. Any time one uses Medicare and/or Social Security budgetary reforms to forestall cuts in other spending or promote tax relief it will be rightfully demagogued - the electorate isn't brain dead. Either we ALL make the necessary sacrifices for fiscal responsibility, or someone will pay politically. I'll help lead the charge.
2/6/97
