Washington, D.C. - The editorial “Responsibility Gap” [Oct. 16], failed to address the huge responsibility gap created by President Bush’s failure to pay for our efforts in Iraq in an honest and upfront manner. I agree that whatever position one may have had on the question of going to war in Iraq, we now have a responsibility to establish security and assist in the reconstruction of Iraq.
But we also have other obligations – to level with the American people and pay for our efforts in Iraq in a responsible way. Both before and after the war, the president failed to prepare the American people for the real costs of “winning the peace.” Now he seeks to disguise the consequences of those costs by putting them on our national credit card and running up huge deficits. Every penny of the $87 billion requested by the president–and the $79 billion already spent for Iraq–is borrowed money.
The president has called on the country to pay any price to defeat the scourge of terrorism, but some are not being asked to contribute anything to this national effort. Indeed, while the Bush administration has asked our troops and their families to make the ultimate sacrifice, the president has given the richest 1 percent of Americans a huge tax cut. It is wrong to ask the younger generation, including our troops and their children, to bear the burden alone. We should not be waging war and peace by credit card in order to shield the wealthiest among us from paying their fair share.
We do have a huge responsibility gap in our government. It is the gap between those who understand that we have a responsibility to establish stability and help rebuild Iraq and are prepared to pay for it now, and those who call upon our troops to sacrifice their lives but do not ask the wealthiest Americans to help pay for our efforts. The president is asking the American people to invest billions of dollars of their money to build schools, hospitals, roads, electric grids and communications systems in Iraq when we are failing to meet our own commitments here a home. His budget request for this year falls $9 billion short of what was promised to meet our obligations to America’s school children under the No Child Left Behind legislation. Three out of five children eligible for Head Start cannot receive help because of lack of funds. The same shortfalls occur in health programs, our national transportation infrastructure and a range of other important domestic needs.
We as a nation have enormous resources. We can meet both our domestic priorities and our international responsibilities. But we must be prepared to pay for them. This year, when many of us called for full funding for No Child Left Behind, we were told that we didn’t have the money because the huge Bush tax cuts depleted our funds and we shouldn’t increase the deficit. While the president has no qualms about running up the deficits to pay for Iraq, he will later point to those same deficits as the reason we can’t meet our commitments to educate our children. That is why unless the president is forced to fund our efforts in Iraq by reducing the tax cut for the wealthy the inevitable result will be less investment in important priorities here at home.
The president’s refusal to pay for the $87 billion in a direct manner also undercuts his push to assist Iraq through grants rather than loans. I support the president’s view that loans send the wrong message to the Iraqi people and the international community. They fuel suspicions that the United States is more interested in making a profit than building a democracy in Iraq, and they make it difficult for the United States to ask other countries to forgive the Iraqi debts they hold. But the push for loans has been fueled by the lack of a proposal to cover the costs of our efforts in a straightforward manner. Why, many Americans are asking, should we borrow from our children to rebuild Iraq? I believe if the president were to ask the wealthiest to sacrifice some of their tax cut to pay for those grants, he would deflate the push for loans.
The Post seems to argue that, because the president has so far refused to scale back his tax cuts to pay for the war and its aftermath, those of us who believe we have a responsibility to provide security and aid in the reconstruction in Iraq have no alternative to supporting the president’s request as is. That is a false choice. We should hold the President to a higher standard of leadership. He should be required to confront the true costs and consequences of our decisions in Iraq. If the president believes, as I do, that we have a responsibility to provide security and help rebuild Iraq, he should have the simple courage to pay for it.