26 Hours Left (The Issues They Missed)

With 14 hours to go until the polls open, I thought I would throw out a few last thoughts about the 2004 election, most of which I hope will stimulate discussion even after the results are known.

For me the 2004 election started in the spring of 2003 with the beginning of primary season. Over the past 18 months I have met a lot of great people and even after a couple of nasty races and a disappointing primary election, this has still been a great election cycle. I look forward to watching the results tomorrow evening, cheering for President Bush and Republican victory.

However, there are three issues I think are vitally important that have gotten very little discussion:

Education Education is the key to a strong economy and will become even more important as time goes on and our economy becomes even more dominated by knowledge based industries. This election was a great time to discuss how we could solve the problems that exist with out educational system, but we dropped the ball.

In Kansas education funding has been used in attempts to raise taxes over the past few years. Our State Reps. talked about it a little in the primary and not at all in the general. Most campaigns stuck to the generic, "I am a product of Kansas schools, my kids go to Kansas schools, I know how important schools are to the economy" a line that means nothing. Education was not an issue and voters gave no mandate for higher taxes in Kansas, remember that when the legislature convenes in January.

In the third district congressional race, Moore voted for NCLB, but "has some concerns", it would have been nice for him to explain those concerns and how he would solve them, but he didn't, and Kobach's campaign didn't push him to. Kobach thinks we should take away the federal mandate to fund NCLB and special education, but keep funding both. Does that mean we take testing standards out of NCLB? Why are we going to fund something we have no mandate to fund? He does know that we need to get the undocumented immigrants out of our schools, especially our colleges, it's the common sense conservative thing to do.

At the national level Bush wants to extend No Child Left Behind to high schools a positive step towards bringing accountability to the most neglected high schools in our nation, Kerry wants to...Well Kerry wants to...well Kerry knows that this President has presided over the worst economy since Hoover and well...wrong school, wrong time, I mean...I have a plan to get this county back on track...I mean I have a four point plan, that's it Kerry has a real four point plan.

Social Security- The generation X and Y timebomb. This is probably the biggest fiscal problem our nation, indeed most industrialized nations, will ever face. The population is aging, not as fast as Japan or Europe, but aging quickly. With that aging comes tremendous new demands that our nation must deal with. The system we have in place right now will not be able to meet those demands, we have know that to be the case for thirty years and ignored it. Without serious changes baby boomer retirement will be a disaster. Real problems start in 2013, nine years from now.

The 2004 election would have been a fine time to discuss this, there was no discussion. We know many candidates, including John Kerry, have pledged not to reduce benefits or raise taxes, great on the campaign trail, disaster in policy. No changes now = massive debt and huge tax increases in the future. The simple truth is that the current system can't fulfill the promises it has made to our seniors, and will never be anything except a crushing burden for seniors in high school.

Debt- Skyrocketing national debt creates a lot of problems including higher tax burdens, higher interest rates and a weaker US dollar. The culprit is out of control government spending. The Bush tax cuts account for about a third, the war accounts for about a tenth, and rampant indulgent spending accounts for the rest. Balancing the budget in the late 1990s was one part fiscal restraint and about nine parts blind luck. As Social Security moves from a surplus to a deficit over the next decade or so balancing the budget will be more difficult every year.

The only way to balance the budget is serious fiscal restraint, that means making choices and telling some people no, you cannot have the money you want. Unfortunately the President has not done well on this count, although he has faced some remarkable circumstances that have made his job more difficult. Kerry wants to cut the deficit in half, right after he spends an extra $1.4 trillion or so and raises taxes by $400 billion or so, piling an additional $800 billion of debt to the $400 billion deficit we already have. For the record, at the writing of this article the US government owes approximately $7.4 trillion, a little more than $25,000 for every person in the US, and growing at a rate of just under $1.7 billion every day.






Timothy Burger