[NLA] Info: The Real State of the Union

[Jon Randall]

The Washington Post
January 22, 2003, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A15
HEADLINE: State Of the Homeland
BYLINE: David S. Broder

The editors of the Atlantic Monthly, in partnership with the
New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, have
produced for the current issue of their magazine a feature
called "the real state of the union."

The 15 short essays, outlining domestic challenges facing
the nation and proposing unconventional ways of dealing with
them, comprise an exhilarating and mind-stretching way of
thinking about where the United States stands at this
moment.

When President Bush delivers his State of the Union Address
next Tuesday, he will probably focus on the international
scene, especially the war on terrorism and the looming
showdown with Iraq. These essays look at the home front,
where the tests are different but equally important. The
theme common to these challenges is the imbalance evident in
so many dimensions of American life. Where presidents
customarily generalize about the condition of the country --
"the state of the union is strong" -- these authors, who
have no political ax to grind, can be candid in describing
the gaps and gulfs within this society.

Those divisions were laid bare in the last presidential
election, when the electoral map starkly displayed the
layout of "red" and "blue" states that gave their electoral
votes to Bush or Al Gore. But that was just the beginning:
Given a choice between two credentialed, centrist
candidates, men chose Bush and women Gore. Whites voted for
Bush, minorities for Gore. City residents went for Gore; the
countryside, even more heavily, for Bush.

The authors in this symposium take those differences as
their starting point and ask readers to think about what the
country might do if it seriously wanted to heal the
divisions.

Michael Lind tackles "the new continental divide" between
the crowded, immigrant-attracting and minority-heavy coastal
areas, which went for Gore, and the pro-Bush interior,
including the Great Plains states, many of which are
shedding population. He suggests politically difficult but
plausible changes in current agriculture and water policies,
aimed at spurring economic development in the lightly
populated states and eventually relieving the population
pressures that burden traffic and cause pollution on both
coasts.

Shannon Brownlee writes about a less-noticed gap, that in
the supply of medical services. Where doctors and hospitals
are abundant, researchers at Dartmouth and other centers
have found, medical expenditures are disproportionately
high -- with no evidence of better health results. The
implication: Redistribution of resources might produce
significant savings and at the same time improve the overall
quality of medical care.

But the main focus of several essays is the growing
inequality of wealth and income in the United States and the
policies that might address it. The foundation for this
analysis is a useful chart, credited to Maya MacGuineas, on
the "real" federal budget.

In addition to $ 1.3 trillion for entitlements such as
Social Security and Medicare, and $ 730 billion for defense
and discretionary domestic programs, her budget includes $
800 billion in tax expenditures, the revenue the government
relinquishes to subsidize private individuals and business.

The biggest of these tax expenditures are the exclusions for
pension contributions and employer-sponsored savings plans
and for employer-financed health insurance, deductions for
home mortgage interest payments and state-local tax
payments, and reduced capital gains rates.

More than half these tax expenditures go to households with
incomes of more than $ 100,000 a year and only 15 percent to
those with incomes less than $ 50,000.

This tilt, combined with the Bush tax reductions for
top-bracket earners and the unyielding Social Security
levies from the first dollars of wages, helps explain why
the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans continues
to increase.

The message of these essays is that this gap not only
threatens the growth of a healthy middle class but also
contributes to the worrisome loss of social trust among
Americans. Republicans continually decry "class warfare"
rhetoric from their opponents, but the Atlantic Monthly
essays show how current and proposed tax policies are
sharpening class lines.

In the final essay, Ted Halstead, the founder and head of
the New America Foundation, describes "the American
paradox" -- the richest, most powerful nation suffering from
"higher rates of poverty, infant mortality, homicide and HIV
infection, and from greater income inequality, than other
advanced democracies."

Rebuilding a solid center for such a nation, he says, will
require a new "social contract," protecting economic freedom
and flexibility but seeking social fairness. This project --
which is to be repeated by the magazine annually --
represents a serious start in that direction.

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Jon Randall
Public Policy Committee Chair
National Coalition for Literacy
www.natcoalitionliteracy.org

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