Budget sacrifices required to fund war on terror

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2001 | by Sean Paige

Spending fever swept through Washington in the aftermath of Sept. 11 as bureaucrats, industry lobbyists, interest groups and opportunistic politicians scrambled to game the crisis for advantage or gain. But one man -- White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels Jr. -- has served as a lonely bulwark against the unruly mob, preaching the gospel of fiscal restraint and responsibility to uncertain effect.

Rebuking the capital's cake-and-eat-it-too crowd, whom he accused of launching "opportunistic spending sorties masquerading as `emergency' needs," Daniels has argued that budget trade-offs and sacrifices will be necessary if the nation is to avoid a backward free fall into the deficit zone from which it only recently emerged.

"Many lesser priorities will have to yield while we ensure that the essential functions of government are provided for," Darnels said during a recent speech in New York City. "The alternative is to discard discipline totally and imperil our long-term economic health." He said new priorities could be addressed without pillaging the Treasury, assuming that politicians were willing to re-examine existing programs and spending in light of the new realities. "Everything ought to be held up to scrutiny," Daniels said in one interview. "Situations like this can have a clarifying benefit. People who could not identify a low priority or lousy program before may now see the need."

It is all but certain that fiscal 2002 spending bills and a slowing economy will mean a return to budget deficits after a five-year hiatus. But how deeply the nation goes into debt largely will be determined by the willingness of politicians -- and, by extension, the constituents they represent -- to sacrifice and balance priorities. The two new imperatives of combating terror and nursing the economy are fully affordable, according to Daniels. But he said the real danger is that we will "layer it on top of the government we have." Everything no longer can be sacrosanct in a time of emergency, Daniels said.

Leading Democrats immediately accused Daniels and the administration of cynically using such arguments to throw children, the elderly and unfortunates into the streets starving social programs to fatten military budgets. "Democrats are not going to allow Osama bin Laden to accomplish what Mitch Daniels couldn't do on his own," huffed Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.).