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An Agenda for Democrats: America's Decay

by Robert L. Borosage

In politics, as in magic, directing the public's eye is the essence of the art. That is why Democratic control of the Senate can help transform our political debate. With aggressive committee investigations, Democrats can expose the myth that provided protective covering for President Bush's tax cuts: the claim that the cuts come from a "surplus," from money "left over," as Bush says, "after we've funded our priorities." Democrats now should turn the public's eye from the money that hasn't been spent to the needs that haven't been met.

On any sober reflection, the Bush claim is preposterous. His surplus comes from assuming continued decline in domestic programs over the next decade. Yet one in six children still is raised in poverty. More than 42 million Americans go without health care. The echo generation of 70 million children is flooding schools that average 42 years of age. It will take an estimated $127 billion simply to bring schools up to code. No parents would suggest the family budget was in "surplus," if they hadn't added in payments to fix the leak in the roof, feed the children and pay tuition.

Yet, in the national debate over the tax cut, we've heard very little about America's growing public squalor -- or about how middle-income Americans will end up paying more for neglected public investments than they will ever pocket from the tax cuts.

During the past eight years, the Republican majority in both houses of Congress has had no interest in probing the social costs of spending cuts. Minority Democrats couldn't convene hearings and had little desire to expose neglect taking place on a Democratic president's watch. They were content with identifying the two or three issues -- prescription drugs, school construction -- that Bill Clinton would take to the public each budget cycle. With Clinton devoted to debt reduction, America's rising public investment needs went largely unmentioned.

Opponents of the tax cut were thus at a severe disadvantage. Public attention was directed at the budget "surplus," not the investment deficit. So Democrats denounced the unfairness of the Bush plan. They pared it back to claim more money for the few items in the public eye: education, a prescription drug benefit. They railed against Bush's back-door raid on the Medicare trust fund. But the case for vital public investments in other areas hadn't been made.

Now, for all the talk about the Senate Democrats raking over what Bush is doing, the real challenge for Democrats is to turn attention to what is not being done, to dramatize America's social disrepair. For example, consider the decline of our public health system. Every year the Center for Disease Control reports 76 million people suffer food poisoning and 5,000 die from it. Yet during the past decade, as food imports skyrocketed, the Food and Drug Administration's resources barely changed. The FDA inspects food manufacturers about once in every eight years. Testing is so limited that, as Laurie Garrett reported in "Betrayal of Trust," an investigation of the global public health collapse, "It's as if a few dozen people scattered around the country were each given a thimble full of water from which to derive the microbial contents of the entire Pacific Ocean."

The energy crisis should make it easier to draw attention to basic infrastructure -- roads, bridges, airports, mass transit, rail lines, sewers, water and waste systems. A recent evaluation by the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the United States an overall grade of D-plus and estimates that it would cost taxpayers a breathtaking $1.3 trillion in the next five years merely to remedy wide-ranging bottlenecks. Airports have experienced a 37 percent increase in traffic and a 1 percent increase in capacity. The nation's spending on drinking water falls short of requirements by about $14 billion a year. Government spending at all levels is billions less than what is needed simply to maintain mass-transit systems at their current inadequate levels of performance.

Americans can't escape paying for these investment deficits. They pay in rising property taxes for schools and teachers; in soaring health insurance bills for treatment of diseases we fail to prevent; in exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses for, say, quality child care that now costs more than in-state college tuition, when it is available. They pay in lives lost on dangerous roads and hours wasted in delays on crowded roads, subways and runways. And inevitably, in slower growth, more poverty and rising inefficiency.

It's too late to stop this feckless tax cut. But it is not too late for Democrats to turn the public's eye to the needs we have not met and begin a new debate about resources and priorities.