September 26, 2004: Headlines: COS - Ethiopia: Politics: Deficiit: International Herald Tribune: Neither of the two major deficit hawks in 1992 - Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot - won, but the debate created an effective mandate for fiscal discipline

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Ethiopia: Special Report: Ethiopia RPCV, Senator and Presidential Candidate Paul Tsongas: September 26, 2004: Headlines: COS - Ethiopia: Politics: Deficiit: International Herald Tribune: Neither of the two major deficit hawks in 1992 - Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot - won, but the debate created an effective mandate for fiscal discipline

By Admin1 (admin) (151.196.185.151) on Saturday, October 02, 2004 - 1:20 pm: Edit Post

Neither of the two major deficit hawks in 1992 - Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot - won, but the debate created an effective mandate for fiscal discipline

Neither of the two major deficit hawks in 1992 - Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot - won, but the debate created an effective mandate for fiscal discipline

Neither of the two major deficit hawks in 1992 - Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot - won, but the debate created an effective mandate for fiscal discipline

America's deficit time bomb

The Boston Globe

Rarely has a nation borrowed so heavily against the future as the United States does now and at the same time exhibited such extreme political partisanship. One example: the Roman Empire - during its fall.
.
Peter Peterson, a Republican who was commerce secretary in the Nixon administration, points to that historic collapse even as he warns of the hole America is digging for itself. Record budget deficits are piling up while the baby boom generation begins leaving the work force, when they will stop paying into the Social Security and Medicare systems and start drawing them down.
.
Yet little is heard on the subject from George Bush or John Kerry.
.
Terrorism and nuclear proliferation will doubtless receive a lot of attention in the last remaining weeks before the November election, but runaway deficits, leaving the United States beholden to foreign investors and freighting America's children with debt, are also a serious threat. All of these issues deserve much more debate.
.
Earlier this year the International Monetary Fund issued a report that should have set off alarms, concluding, in Peterson's words, that the U.S. government is "careening toward insolvency."
.
The peril can be largely ignored by presidential candidates, says Warren Rudman, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, because the nation is preoccupied with Iraq and because both candidates "have very low credibility" on the deficit. Bush and Kerry both talk about halving the annual deficit in four or five years.
.
Kerry at least advocates raising some revenue, but his proposed rollback of the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000 would be swallowed up by his health care plan, a worthwhile proposal, but leaving little for deficit reduction.
.
In fact, there are big differences on this crucial issue.
.
The key date is Sept. 30, 2002, when the pay-as-you-go statute was allowed to expire. For most of its 12 years, Paygo effectively required Congress to balance any major expenditures, whether new programs or tax cuts, with revenue increases or cuts in other programs to pay for them. Paygo contributed to the big budget surpluses of the later Clinton years.
.
Kerry supported Paygo, as he supported the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction bill as a maverick among Democrats in 1985. But the Republican Congress shucked off that fiscal discipline with the active support of the Bush administration. Deficits were a major issue in 1992. Neither of the two major deficit hawks that year - Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot - won, but the debate created an effective mandate. This year, silence threatens to create a mandate for inaction.
.
Bush and Kerry should step up and discuss the morality of leaving succeeding generations to pay off trillions of dollars in debt.
.
- The Boston Globe





When this story was posted in October 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:


Director Gaddi Vasquez:  The PCOL Interview Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview
PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.

Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security.
Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention
Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny?
 Peace Corps: One of the Best Faces of America Peace Corps: One of the Best Faces of America
Teresa Heinz Kerry celebrates the Peace Corps Volunteer as one of the best faces America has ever projected in a speech to the Democratic Convention. The National Review disagreed and said that Heinz's celebration of the PCV was "truly offensive." What's your opinion and can you come up with a Political Funny?


Read the stories and leave your comments.






Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.

Story Source: International Herald Tribune

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ethiopia; Politics; Deficiit

PCOL14116
99

.


Add a Message


This is a public posting area. Enter your username and password if you have an account. Otherwise, enter your full name as your username and leave the password blank. Your e-mail address is optional.
Username:  
Password:
E-mail: