April 10, 1988, Sunday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION; NEWS; Pg. 6
By Al Gordon
The Democratic presidential
contenders agree that Ronald Reagan has taken the nation down the wrong road on
domestic policy. But Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and Tennessee Sen.
Albert Gore Jr. are eyeing a more cautious path toward change than the one
mapped out by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
According to their campaign
pronouncements, all three would run a more activist federal government than
Reagan, who is fond of the line: “Government is not the solution, it is the
problem.” They would give Washington a greater role, for example, in promoting
economic growth, creating jobs, improving the welfare system, expanding
educational opportunities, increasing housing and protecting the environment.
But while Jackson would launch
major initiatives on all those fronts, Dukakis and Gore would move more
incrementally.
Perhaps the central distinction
among them is that while Dukakis and Gore see the federal budget deficit as a
constraint on their actions and couch their proposals accordingly, Jackson does
not.
Stuart Eizenstat, who was
President Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policymaker, said Jackson’s platform
combines some traditional New Deal liberal thinking - more spending on social
programs, redistributing income to the poor - with “a heavy dose of
populism” - aggressive attacks on multinational corporations and a focus on
conflicts between “economic haves and have-nots.”
Jackson’s rivals, Eizenstat
said, are both essentially “neoliberals.” By that he means Gore and Dukakis
tend to think the federal government should be “a catalyst” for combined
federal, state and privatesector action rather than a source of big new spending
programs in the New Deal-Great Society manner.
Felix Rohatyn, the Manhattan
investment banker who helped orchestrate the bailout of New York City, puts the
distinction a little differently.
“Jackson has a very clear vision
about where he would like to take the country,” Rohatyn said, adding, “I’m
afraid it isn’t clear to me how you get there from here within the context of
our current economic situation.”
“The problem with the others,”
including Vice President George Bush, the probable Republican nominee, as well
as Dukakis and Gore, he said, is that “their policy is not really spelled
out.” Rohatyn said that to some extent, voters simply have to rely on the two
Democrats’ track records as “very capable people” in their public offices.
Many analysts credit Jackson with
pushing his rivals to take stronger stances and be truer to traditional
Democratic values than they might otherwise have been. Dukakis, for instance,
has taken to emphasizing his “compassion” and Gore to talking of his
commitment to “working men and women.” The two also increasingly are picking
up Jackson’s themes of the need for a full-scale war on drugs and a tougher
line against the wave of corporate mergers and takeovers.
Although the candidates’
pronouncements and records can indicate their priorities, in reality a
president’s ability to act is greatly limited by his ability to persuade
Congress to enact his programs.
On that score, Gore is a veteran
of 12 years on Capitol Hill and Dukakis has run a state government for nine.
Jackson has no governmental experience, although his supporters say he has an
edge over his rivals when it comes to the kind of inspirational leadership that
has allowed presidents to rally public opinion behind their agenda.
In any case, says Lester Thurow,
dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology school of management, the
nation’s economic problems are serious enough to limit any president’s
freedom of action. Thurow is skeptical about attaching much weight to the
candidates’ campaign pronouncements.
“The very ugly fact of life,”
Thurow said, “is that nobody could truthfully say what he plans to do after
Jan. 20 and stand a prayer of getting elected.” The budget cuts and tax
increases needed to narrow the federal deficit, expected to be at least $ 150
billion this year, would be politically unpalatable, he said, so candidates are
“talking about everything else.”
On the central question of the
budget, Jackson has been the most specific. He calls Reaganomics “a dead
end” and says the answer is to “go back out the same way you got in.”
He would retain the new tax
law’s interim 1987 top personal income tax bracket at 38.5 percent rather than
going ahead with the scheduled cut to 28 percent this year. He would increase
corporate taxes back to pre-Reagan levels. And he would sharply cut defense
spending, doing away with most major planned new weapons systems, including the
MX and Midgetman missiles and two new aircraft carriers.
Jackson estimates that his plan
would cut the deficit to $ 50 billion. Eizenstat challenges that, saying that
“under the most optimistic assumptions,” the new taxes and defense cuts
“would be a wash” with Jackson’s $ 50 billion to $ 100 billion in new
spending plans.
At the other pole, Dukakis has
been adamant in refusing to offer specifics about his budget thinking. Doing so
would be “very naive,” he said in a Boston debate, adding, “the last thing
you want to do is offer a budget now” when the state of the economy in 1989 is
unknown. He cited his bitter experience in 1975, his first year as governor,
when, having promised no new taxes during the campaign, he had to raise them
sharply and also chop spending on social services to close an unexpectedly large
deficit.
Dukakis stresses that he has
balanced the Massachusetts budget. That’s something he’s required to do by
the state’s constitution. He says he won’t rule out new federal taxes.
Otherwise, his only revenue proposal is to extend to the federal level the idea
he pioneered in Massachusetts, which New York subsequently copied, of increasing
tax collections through a tax-evader amnesty coupled with stiffer enforcement
measures. Dukakis estimates that $ 110 billion in federal taxes goes uncollected
annually. But he hasn’t predicted how much his plan would yield, and many
experts doubt that it would raise enough to make more than a minor dent in the
deficit.
In Congress, Gore voted against
most elements of Reaganomics, but in 1986, he voted for a balancedbudget
constitutional amendment pushed by the administration. In 1985, he voted for the
Gramm-Rudman plan to reduce the deficit through mandatory spending cuts, but in
1986, he voted against it; in 1987, he was absent from the vote on the plan.
In recent speeches, Gore has
proposed “spending reductions in areas intentionally overlooked by the Reagan
administration” such as farm subsidies and defense. However, while Jackson
would trim major defense programs unilaterally, Gore says such cuts should only
follow arms control accords with the Soviet Union. Gore also talks about
“partial means testing of some entitlement programs” - for example, said
Gore’s issues director, Kenneth Jost, taxing or limiting Social Security
benefits for those at unspecified “higher income levels.”
The senator also proposes
“standby taxes” to be used “as a last resort”: He would raise about $ 8
billion by setting the top income tax bracket at 33 percent, $ 5 billion on
taxing capital gains from estates and $ 1 billion to $ 2 billion through a
“luxury tax” on purchases over $ 30,000.
However, economists who have
looked at his plan say there still would be billions in deficits even if all the
measures were adopted.
There are also distinctions on the
candidates’ broader economic policies.
Jackson has campaigned on the
theme of “economic violence” - an attack on corporations for closing plants
in the United States in favor of facilities in low-wage nations abroad. He would
require companies to provide advance notice of plant closings and to pay “a
fair share of the cost of dislocation.” He would deal with trade deficits by
demanding higher wages and improved worker safety standards in the Third World,
although he is unclear on how he would accomplish that.
One of his most novel ideas is to
require that 10 percent of the assets in the nation’s public employee pension
plans, about $ 60 billion, be invested in federally guaranteed bonds that would
be used to finance low-income housing, low-interest business loans and public
works projects. Rohatyn calls the
idea “extremely interesting” although he worries about protecting the
pension funds “fiduciary obligations” - the legal obligation of pension fund
managers to protect the financial interests of the pensioners. Eizenstat thinks
the plan is a misguided venture that would provide “an irresistable
temptation” for congressional pork barrel politics.
Dukakis’ theme, on the other
hand, is the “Massachusetts miracle” - the state’s rebound from a high
unemployment, recession-plagued economy before he took office in 1975 to a low
unemployment, booming economy today. He says the boom is the result of judicious
state spending programs combined with his efforts to lobby business and labor to
join forces for economic growth, policies he would continue in the White House.
Critics charge that he is claiming
credit for a boom that’s really the product of things he had nothing to do
with, such as tax cuts under another governor and the concentration of
prestigious academic institutions in the state that have spurred the growth of
high-tech industry. Nevertheless, there is a general consensus in Massachusetts
that at the least Dukakis did see that new development was steered to some
economically depressed areas of the state.
Gore also is an advocate of
government-businesslabor cooperation as a vehicle for economic growth. He has
taken the most clear-cut stance in favor of free trade and against new measures
to retaliate against nations that run a surplus in their trade with the United
States. Dukakis had held essentially the same position, but during the Michigan
caucus campaign, he switched to an embrace of mild trade sanctions proposed by
Sen. Don Riegle (D-Mich.), who then endorsed him.
The Tennessee lawmaker also
stresses the need for the United States to encourage technological innovation as
a means toward future growth.
Other key issues:
Education. The candidates are
unanimous in their view that education and training are vital to the health of
the economy. All three say they would substantially increase federal aid to
education and federal college loans and scholarships, and would encourage
private sector efforts. All three advocate improving the caliber of teaching
through higher compensation for educators. Dukakis has offered the only specific
price tag: a $ 250-million fund to assist in recruiting and retaining top
teachers.
Jobs and welfare reform. Both
Dukakis and Gore advocate replacing the current system of Aid to Families with
Dependent Children with a new system that would offer job training and jobs to
welfare recipients. The Dukakis administration pushed an innovative voluntary
job training program in Massachusetts that’s generally considered to have been
successful to date. Gore has cosponsored Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s (D-N.Y.)
welfare revision plan, which would make work or training mandatory for welfare
parents with children 3 or older. Jackson opposes mandatory workfare but backs
“innovative programs that provide jobs for all who can work.” All agree on
raising the federal minimum wage from $ 3.35 per hour, but disagree on the size
of the hike. Jackson would go to $ 4.65 and then index it to the growth of
average wages; Gore favors $ 4.65 but no indexing; Dukakis would index but would
limit the initial raise to $ 4.25.
Housing and the homeless. All
three charge that cutbacks in federal housing subsidy programs during the Reagan
years have contributed to the nation’s housing crisis. They would
substantially expand federal efforts to promote housing construction and
rehabilitation. They also would increase federal assistance for shelters and
other emergency aid to the homeless, although they agree that permanent housing
is a preferable solutiuon.
Drugs. Jackson is the acknowledged
leader on this issue. For years, he has gone to the nation’s schools to urge
students to refrain from drug use, and he has strongly attacked the Reagan
administration for failing to mount a strong enough war against drugs at home
and abroad. He wants to increase antidrug education programs, use the Coast
Guard and other law-enforcement agencies more aggressively to curtail the
illegal import of drugs, and would name a national “drug czar” to coordinate
antidrug activities. His rivals largely have endorsed his views.
AIDS. All three would
substantially increase federal spending on research to find an AIDS cure -
Dukakis calls for $ 1 billion per year, as does Gore; Jackson hasn’t set a
figure.
Medical Care. Dukakis and Gore
endorse “universal” health insurance, requiring all but the smallest
employers to offer health plans to their employees and by creating a new federal
insurance program for the unemployed. Dukakis has such a plan pending before the
Massachusetts legislature, but it is believed to be snared in a political
tangle. Gore has backed similar measures in Congress. Jackson would go further,
creating a unified, federally run national health insurance program.
Other social issues. All three
support a woman’s right to choose abortion and support gay rights, although
the homosexual community in Massachusetts has at times been at odds with the
governor over his refusal to allow gay couples to adopt children. In one
departure from liberal norms, Gore has endorsed his wife Tipper’s campaign for
labeling recordings of rock music that contain violent or obscene lyrics.
Energy and the environment. All
three promise to ensure more aggressive enforcement of environmental protection
laws, reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil, and encourage the development of
environmentally safe energy sources. They oppose the Shoreham nuclear power
plant and oppose proposed regulations that would allow the federal government to
license Shoreham and other plants over state objections. Dukakis blocked the
opening of the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire. Gore has been active on
energy and environmental issues in Congress and was, for instance, a cosponsor
of the Superfund hazardous-waste program and a leader in efforts to get Love
Canal cleaned up.
Dukakis flatly opposes any fee on
imported oil, saying such a measure would mean higher home heating costs in the
Northeast. Gore favors such a fee if oil imports exceed 50 percent of domestic
consumption and if it included some protection for homeowners. Jackson backs a
fee but would exclude oil from Canada, Mexico and other nations in the Western
Hemisphere with which he would seek an energy alliance.
Advisers. To the extent that a
candidate’s campaign advisers offer a clue to the kind of administration he
would form, differences are evident. Gore and Dukakis have tapped the usual
sources of Democratic expertise: moderate to liberal think tanks such as the
Brookings Institution in Washington; Harvard, Yale and other major academic
institutions; officials of past Democratic administrations; Democrats and their
staff members in Congress and Democratic state governments. Jackson has drawn
advisers from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, a think
tank widely regarded as left wing. He also has drawn upon the issue experts who
worked for the failed presidential campaigns of Gary Hart and Bruce Babbitt, and
a key economic adviser is Carol O’Cleiracain, an economist for the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Copyright 1988, Newsday Inc.