Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century - Steve Chapman

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report, “it appears that use of anti-personnel mines is on the wane globally, production has dropped dramatically, trade has halted almost completely, stockpiles are being rapidly destroyed, (and) funding for mine action programs is on the rise, while the number of mine casualties in some of the most affected states has fallen greatly.”

      On the downside, mines have been used extensively in Chechnya and Kosovo by Russian and Yugoslavian forces. Several governments have deployed the weapons, including Angola, Burundi and Sudan, as have many insurgent armies.

      Neither the good nor the bad of the last three years has been affected in the slightest by our decision not to sign. Angola and Burundi aren’t planting mines because of Bill Clinton’s position. And the U.S. never objected to curbing the manufacture, trade and use of mines that can go on killing indiscriminately for years after they’ve served their military purpose.

      We balked at joining the agreement only because we weren’t willing to get rid of the mines placed along the 38th parallel to slow a North Korean invasion of South Korea — mines located in areas closed to noncombatants. We also saw no point in forcing our military to abandon “smart” mines that automatically deactivate within hours or days of being laid.

      Children in Cambodia and Mozambique weren’t being blown up by U.S. Army mines, and neither were civilians in other places. American mines, in reality, were responsible for none of the problems that the land-mine treaty aimed at eliminating. But the accord pretended that our mines were a dire threat.

      The Clinton administration realized where the real problem lay. So it spurned doing something meaningless but dangerous in favor of doing something tangible and extremely useful: getting rid of the mines that actually pose a danger.

      Since 1993, the U.S. has devoted more than $400 million to what is known as “humanitarian de-mining assistance” in 37 different countries, and we’re planning to spend another $110 million this year. As Goose acknowledges, that’s more than any other country has contributed.

      Our program is one big reason that 22 million anti-personnel mines have been destroyed around the world. It’s also a big reason that the toll in death and disability from these weapons is falling every year.

      The president who was not “on the side of humanity,” it turns out, has been an indispensable ally in the effort to rid the world of the danger posed by land mines. He might drop a note to Jody Williams with a brief message: You’re welcome.

       Thursday, September 21, 2000

      Remember that pony you asked Santa Claus to bring you when you were 7 years old? You were disappointed then, but if you’re still interested, write a letter to Al Gore. A pony for all the people who never got one is about the only thing he hasn’t promised yet.

      Bill Clinton has made his mark by undertakings now universally known as “Clintonesque” — unassailable, small-bore programs that made for great applause lines but cost so little that even the stingiest congressional Republicans could hardly object. Clinton, however, governed during a period of budget deficits. Gore expects a large and growing surplus, and he knows just what to do with it: Spend.

      In days of old — say, 1998 — every big spending proposal was met with the vexing question of how to pay for it. Raise taxes? Run an even bigger deficit? Cut outlays elsewhere in the budget? None of these options was terribly attractive, so spending growth was contained, if not reversed.

      But surpluses give the alluring impression that new programs don’t actually have to be paid for. Taxes won’t rise, other expenditures won’t have to be cut, and there is no deficit to enlarge. Our new buddy Mr. Surplus will take care of it, with no pain or effort on our part. Gore doesn’t even refer to his plans as spending money. He calls it “using our prosperity.”

      And use it he does. According to the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the spending plans Gore has proposed so far would expand the federal budget by $2.3 trillion over the next 10 years. Gore has promised to preserve the share of the surplus attributable to Social Security. But by CRFB’s calculations, his policies would exhaust not only the entire projected non-Social Security surplus, but part of the Social Security surplus as well. (Bush would do the same thing, says the group, but mostly through tax cuts).

      Keeping up with Gore’s cascade of goodies is like drinking from a fire hose. In August, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation published a study toting up the cost of everything promised so far by the two major candidates. Two weeks later, it had to issue an update because Bush had piled another $33 billion on top of his original plans, while Gore had gone even further, adding $39 billion.

      Even these alarming numbers may understate what his ambitions will cost. Gore’s Medicare prescription drug plan is supposed to soak up $340 billion over 10 years. But one lesson of budget history, says Carol Cox Wait of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is this: “We almost always underestimate the cost of new health care entitlements — and not by a little, but often by 50 or 100 percent.”

      There is even more potential for blood-curdling shocks in Gore’s “Retirement Security Plus.” It would obligate the federal government to “match” private retirement savings, with Washington kicking in $3 for every $1 saved by low-income households, $1 for each $1 saved by middle-income families, and $1 for every $3 saved by high-income taxpayers.

      Hoover Institution economist John Cogan told The Wall Street Journal that if everyone eligible saved the maximum covered by the program, this program would cost a staggering $160 billion a year. Even if participation rates were no higher than those of people in private pension plans (about 75 percent), it would add $120 billion a year to the federal budget — not the $35 billion claimed by the vice president.

      All this means that the non-Social Security surplus — and perhaps more — will vanish into the federal maw. That, of course, assumes the surplus will even be there to squander. Budget projections are notoriously unreliable, because unforeseen events can have drastic effects.

      Most of the surplus, moreover, is nothing more than a tantalizing possibility. Robert Bixby of the bipartisan Concord Coalition, which advocates fiscal restraint, notes that about 70 percent of the projected 10-year surplus doesn’t appear until the last five years — too far off to be the basis of permanent spending commitments. All it would take to obliterate the budget cushion is a serious recession, which is a real possibility in the next decade.

      By then, taxpayers could be on the hook for a raft of new obligations that will demand funding regardless of the state of the economy — and the deficit that took so long to overcome will be back. The presidential nominees act as though the budget surplus is as permanent as the Appalachian Mountains. The way things are going, it will likely resemble the country singer George Jones’ idea of romantic commitment: for better or for worse, but not for long.

       Women want to live their lives without being dehumanized by those who hold power over them

       Sunday, September 24, 2000

      Human life is everywhere a state in which there is much to be endured and little to be enjoyed, according to Samuel Johnson. If Johnson had been a female, the observation might have continued: And that goes double for women.

      With the collapse of communism and other forms of dictatorship, the last decade and a half has been a period of rapid progress in respect for human rights. But a more intractable tyranny still weighs on that part of the human race that is shortchanged, abused and oppressed merely for being female. This burden isn’t news, but it deserves the attention it gets in a recent report, “Lives Together, Worlds Apart,” published by the United Nations Population Fund.

      The scope of the problem is so vast as to defy comprehension, but UNFPA offers some arresting statistics. About 585 million adult females can’t read or write, partly because girls are less likely to be sent to school than boys. Worldwide,

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