Concord Coalition

George Bush says that Bill Clinton's plan for dealing with the budget deficit is all "smoke and mirrors. " Bush certainly has the credentials to make that judgment. After all, he was elected president in 1988 while advocating the oxymoronic "flexible freeze" as a solution, and since then has presided over a $1.5 trillion increase in the national debt. As it happens, there is a lot of Bushwah in Clinton's budget proposals, too. Left to themselves, these two gentlemen might write another chapter in evasion when it comes to real repair work on the budget.

Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky will be trying to make a lot of skeptics into believers at the "summit" on federal entitlement spending she will convene today, and we will be watching with fingers crossed. Our position has been staked out: Support for the Concord Coalition's proposal that entitlement payments be scaled back progressively for the 42 percent of American families whose income, including entitlements, exceeds $40,000. Entitlements include a variety of federal programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, that have been given to all Americans, whether they need them or not. There is a persuasive argument that says only those programs that are available to everyone are supported and sustained successfully.

"There comes a time in every massacre," said former Rep. Sam Steiger (R., Ariz.), "when all you can do is shoot your horse and hunker down behind it. " Well, it's time for opponents of huge deficits to get off our high horse and admit that we are being massacred. To paper over his reckless tax cuts and binge spending, George Bush is piling up debt that will one day shock and awe our kids. The President and his party pals are adding almost $2 billion a day - $2 trillion per four-year term - to the national debt.

Each Sunday from now until the Republican National Convention, the Commentary Page will run the responses of Republicans to the following question: Name one challenge or issue facing the nation that is especially important to you, and talk about what the Republican Party should do to address it. JOYCE C. MORRIS NEWTOWN SQUARE I agree 100 percent with the Concord Coalition that we should use the surplus to reform Social Security and...

WASHINGTON - It's all but impossible to glean from the political rhetoric, but government borrowing will grow by trillions of dollars over the next decade if the budget backed by House Republicans translates into law. And by a few trillion more if President Obama gets his way. Call it the unpleasant truth behind a political struggle over raising the debt limit that is expected to intensify as lawmakers return Monday from a two-week break....

The deal that the nation's leaders cut on Sunday pays hundreds of thousands of federal workers for not working last week - and pays them to do their jobs for the next month. How were these statesmen able to reach the brilliant decision that it's better that park rangers, medical researchers and paper-shufflers be paid for working rather than for staying home? By hammering out some verbiage that gives each side some bragging rights but leaves the big decisions for later. To the delight of the Republicans and quite a few Democrats, the deal sets a seven-year pace for balancing the budget - which is slower than ideal but still two years faster than President Clinton wanted.

With an election looming, most politicians would rather donate their campaign funds to charity than talk about the rising cost of "entitlements" such as Medicare, federal pensions and Social Security. Instead of dealing with these multibillion-dollar items, Republicans prefer to sweat the small stuff, such as a $10 million school project in Texas slipped into the crime bill. Meanwhile, Democrats would have you believe health-care reform will finish the deficit-cutting job they started last year.

A lot of Americans seem not to realize it, but despite the taxes and belt- tightening that Congress approved this summer, the federal government will suffer from large deficits throughout the 1990s - unless more is done. Fortunately, more may happen. To get the budget package passed, Democratic legislative leaders promised rank-and-file lawmakers a shot at making more spending cuts this fall. And it's starting to look as if this Round Two on the budget will deliver serious savings.

The Washington budget battle reached home when about 40 senior citizens confronted health-care professionals and deficit-reduction advocates in a forum on Medicare. Proponents of the federal health-care program sounded the alarm after a May 17 congressional budget vote called for half of the proposed $1 trillion deficit reduction over the next five years to come from spending on Medicare and Medicaid. "We feel the government is trying to solve the deficit problem out of Medicare, and that's not fair," said Walter Collins, a local coordinator for the project American Association of Retired Persons/VOTE.

Dr. Phil: "Today we're talking with VIPs who say they did their best to stop politicians from bloating the budget, slashing taxes, and abusing our children with IOUs. It's one of 2009's hottest topics now that we're getting hammered by high interest rates and we're $10 trillion in hock to everybody from Beijing to Bahrain. Hey, Ross Perot, you warned us about this disaster, right?" Perot: "Yep, Phil. I talked turkey when I ran for president in 1992 - and 20 million patriots voted for me!

WASHINGTON - Government leaders past and present gathered in Washington Tuesday to do what they do best about the nation's deficit: talk. At an annual "fiscal summit" in a capital city that seems almost comically unable to function, much less take action to trim benefit programs and defense spending or raise taxes to close a crippling budget gap, a crowd of the converted listened to Washington elite: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former President...

THE WRANGLING in Washington over raising the nation's debt ceiling was getting heated. The president supported the increase. Certain members of Congress were resisting the change. It was the 1980s. Then the 1990s. And here we are again. Every few years, it seems, the question of raising the federal borrowing level becomes an issue. But this time, the divide seems even more extreme. The possibility that the current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling won't be increased - and the country won't be able to pay all its bills come next week - seems even more possible.

WASHINGTON - It's all but impossible to glean from the political rhetoric, but government borrowing will grow by trillions of dollars over the next decade if the budget backed by House Republicans translates into law. And by a few trillion more if President Obama gets his way. Call it the unpleasant truth behind a political struggle over raising the debt limit that is expected to intensify as lawmakers return Monday from a two-week break....

DOES $700 BILLION sound like a lot of money? How about $9 trillion, America's current national debt? You already owe $32,000 to the federal government - every American does. If you're an average Philadelphian, it would take almost the entirety of your income to pay off your share of the national debt before taxes. Philadelphia's share of the federal debt is more than $48 billion, which is before baby boomers start to retire and Congress writes a $700 billion check to attempt to fix Wall Street.

The poster art for I.O.U.S.A. - one scary, scary horror flick, by the way - shows the White House with a "For Sale - Foreclosure" sign propped on the lawn. In fact, as director Patrick Creadon lays out the chilling facts of America's economic crisis in his salient documentary, it becomes clear that the fiscal philosophy of the current administration, combined with a costly war and an off-the-map trade deficit, have put us - and our children, and our children's children - in dire straits.

Dr. Phil: "Today we're talking with VIPs who say they did their best to stop politicians from bloating the budget, slashing taxes, and abusing our children with IOUs. It's one of 2009's hottest topics now that we're getting hammered by high interest rates and we're $10 trillion in hock to everybody from Beijing to Bahrain. Hey, Ross Perot, you warned us about this disaster, right?" Perot: "Yep, Phil. I talked turkey when I ran for president in 1992 - and 20 million patriots voted for me!

George W. Bush may be about to have a David Stockman experience. Stockman was Ronald Reagan's first budget director, a self-described radical ideologue who came to his post at the Office of Management and Budget convinced he could help the Gipper tame the ravenous beast they believed the federal government to be. Five and a half years later, an older, wiser Stockman penned a memoir about his time at OMB. He had come to realize that...

"There comes a time in every massacre," said former Rep. Sam Steiger (R., Ariz.), "when all you can do is shoot your horse and hunker down behind it. " Well, it's time for opponents of huge deficits to get off our high horse and admit that we are being massacred. To paper over his reckless tax cuts and binge spending, George Bush is piling up debt that will one day shock and awe our kids. The President and his party pals are adding almost $2 billion a day - $2 trillion per four-year term - to the national debt.

In his new budget, President Bush makes cutting this year's record deficit of $521 billion in half in five years a top priority. All he needs to do now is come up with a realistic plan on how to do it. The deficit-reduction path that Bush outlined in his 402-page budget contains, according to independent analysts, questionable assumptions and large omissions that could greatly increase rather than shrink the huge federal deficit, which is...