Show 4 M &s s i US Elecloratc Issues Mandate Approves Reagan Status Quo “Four More Years” It’s a warmed-ove- r election campaign slogan but it was what the American electorate voted for on Tuesday — a continuation of the Reagan presidency Michael Dukakis might have wanted to face the United States in a new direction but US voters weren't buying They instead were amply satisfied with what they had relative prosperity modest inflation low unemployment and above all peace It was a combination of circumstances that proved unbeatable and gave George Bush the presidency of the United States by a percent popular vote margin a slim but definite mandate It was a set of circumstances also that obscured some major worries that Mr Bush has only now demonstrated any real willingness to come to grips with principally the budget deficits In his victory statement Tuesday night and at his press conference Wednesday he did however acknowledge — somewhat obliquely — this critical concern when he solicited the help of a Democratic Congress in coping with it This included his pledge to work with the national legislators in hammering out a solution This was tacit recognition of the paradox American voters have dealt their president-elec- t strengthening the Dem 54-4- 6 ocrats’ hand in Congress while endorsexecutive leading ership style It is a development that drew — maybe forced is a better word — only deferential recognition of the GOP’s leader in the Senate Bob Dole at the Wednesday press conference while producing undisguised entreaty of the loyal opposition: “We’ve got to get some good support from the Democrats for some of these ideas” The door at this juncture seems on Mr Bush’s part anyway wide open for a sizable amount of bipartisan White House-CapitHill cooperation Conversely however the fact that Mr Bush on Wednesday reiterated his consistent support of military aid for the Nicaraguan Contras a subject that has drawn persistent fire from congressional Democrats indicate this tentative honeymoon isn’t likely to be of long Reagan-Republica- ol Andrew Glass duration Social Security Surplus Masks the Deficit It is amply evident that George Bush will be facing many of the problems Ronald Reagan did including an oppo- sition Congress But he faces them with the endorsement of an American electorate that liked the way his predecessor handled them This is a message that Congress even with its bolstered Democratic majority can’t cavalierly ignore Mr Bush’s mandate is clear In nautical terms: Steady as she goes and don’t rock the boat Cox News Service WASHINGTON — Now we'll see how the new president takes up the task of cutting next year's budget deficit Both candidates pledged to do so although neither has said just how he would do it soon-to-b- e The annual deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept 30 came to $155 billion — or nearly $650 for each American It rose $54 US Must Come to Speaking Terms Stop Talk of a Bilingual Nation Evaluate Education Options rejecting radical measures Tuesday Utah voters demonstrated keen understanding of the state's unique budgetary challenges Residents clearly are more interested in protecting their educational By resoundingly investment than saving themselves a few tax dollars But defeat of the tax initiatives does not mean all is well with government services particularly education In fact public education suffers from serious financial problems that demand attention More than 61 percent of Utah voters turned down Initiatives A B and C "Which would have reduced state taxes as much as $330 million and restricted future government spending The state's 'public and higher education systems comprising 52 percent of local government expenditures and 66 percent of top-lev- the state’s General FundUniform School Fund stood to lose the most from the initiatives Voters apparently recognized that the initiatives went too far in a state whose high birth rate has been straining education budgets for years Enrollment has surged ahead of the economy imposing a relatively heavy burden on taxpayers While Utah ranked 7th highest nationally in the amount of state and local taxes paid per $1000 of personal income in 1986 the state spends less to educate each student than all but one other state Consequently Utah has the country’s largest classes and lowest teacher morale When enrollment plateaus in the 1990s and the economy naturally strengthens the education burden will more lighten Meanwhile however must be done to stimulate the economy and bolster the schools One depends on the other Given the tax burden and ongoing protests there’s little likelihood of major infusions from traditional tax sources right away The alternative is to maximize existing funding sources by shifting money among programs and making essential services more efficient Utah schools are not top heavy by national standards for example but administrative salaries are relatively generous and might be shaved Gov Bang-erte- r with the support of the 1988 Utah Legislature has already initiated a block grant project that would permit schools to do more budget-shiftinSuch measures might be expanded And it's possible that dollars could be stretched a little further at the state's colleges and universities broad-baseAn analysis is to determine what kind of necessary education system Utahns can realistically afford and how best to finance it Such a study should set Utah's school priorities and see whether the financial burden for education is appropriately distributed among taxpayers Then bold action must follow so that taxpayers will be assured of getting the most for their money Gov Norm Bangerter should appoint a special commission to complete this critical assignment as soon as possible Failure of the tax initiatives is not tacit endorsement of the status quo Instead it signals the public's intense interest in a lean but effective education system — an interest requiring forceful government response and leadership g d Votes of Confidence As it turned out the public mood in Utah this past political season favored restraint more than revolt That’s detectable in state government election returns With an astonishing triumph incumbent Republican Gov Norm Bangerter is the most prominent beneficiary of this unruffled voting Trailing badly in public opinion polls as the campaign began Gov Bangerter persistently deferded his record claiming he confronted difficult economic facts and made tough choices personifying the essence of executive leadership Clearly the message became persuasive Considered vulnerable after sponsoring the state’s largest ever tax increase midway through his first term the Republican governor vigorously defended such unavoidable decision-makinand in the end rallied sufficient public acknowledgment to confound perfervid anti-tasentiment whipped up against him His Democratic rival former Salt Lake Cit Mayor Ted Wilson may have pulled his punches assuming a pubhe opinion advantage at the outset was sturdy enough and presence in the race of independent candidate Merrill Cook caused vote splitting but Gov Bangerter proved an adroit politician maneuvering through obstacles and taking advantage of every opportunity A winner by only a plurality — 40 percent ('f the vote — he’s still entitled to the winner's laurels Except for the attorney general all other elected GOB executive branch incumbents retained (ffiee By defeating d budget-balancin- g four-yea- t r Attorney General David L Wilkinson Democrat and former Salt Lake County Attorney Paul Van Dam at the becomes the sole state’s elective administration level If as most analysts contend Mr Van Dam won mostly because voters generally disliked Mr Wilkinson’s stubborn decable TV restricfense of tions then that too shows preference for restraint No wide or deep voter urge to "throw the rascals out" of Utah's Legislature signals from Tuesday’s ballot totals Once again Republicans kept firm control of both House and Senate Incumbents for the most part withstood challenge Troubled by an economy that recov ers slowly from recession still burdened by public education requirements exceeding available economic resources lashed by conflicting notions about solving chronic public difficulties Utah would seem ripe for a political atmosphere the opposite of complaYet cency and smug satisfaction Tuesday's election results exhibit no massive exasperated impatience sus-ptibk to exin nu ui qui k f' advocacy The governor legislators and elected officials at county and other local government levels surely understand that exacting demands and exportations lie immediately ahead for Utah s public policy makers and implementors tor now they've been given a vote of confidence the principal value of which is m how it is put to the best possible use d t ( jh jk A mt m m Universal Press Syndicate When Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney came to the W'hite House in 1986 and exchanged formal greetings with the president he would glide from time to time into a sentence or two in French back to English for a while and maybe a final arabesque in French This was done of course not for his audience either at the White House or on television His target audience was in Canada where the Quebecois ne sont pas du tout amuses when you speak only in English: Dammit the country is officially bilingual In South Africa government officials weave back and forth so readily from Afrikaans to English that they hardly know in w hich language they are conversing: The state is truly bilingual Paradoxically in Switzerland (where all the rules are broken) four languages are spoken and the great majority of the people speak only one It is not unusual to walk 1 kilometer from where everyone speaks in French to find yourself surrounded by people who speak not one word of French e isolaBut such pockets of tion are insulated in Switzerland (and in the low countries) by longstanding traditions What is distinctive about the American culture is the demographic energy Almos everyone it sometimes seems is on the move and it is for this reason that the idea of the melting pot took hold It is extraordinary to reflect that although the whole of the Southwest spoke only Spanish 150 years ago it was speaking only English 50 years ago But when the most recent tidal wave brought in Mexicans and other Latin Americans we pitched into one of those bouts of permissiveness this one specifying that where other languages were densely used the relevant language should appear on all federal forms That was the same season roughly in which we decided that voters didn't have to prov e they could read or write When these words are read we w ill have heard from Florida Arizona and Colorado whether the people there desire that English be the one official language Even if these states vote as California did in 986 in favor of the mother tongue the feds could still get in the way of things by insisting that in federal single-languag- 1 two-ter- court-voide- m- me m m me- m- billion from the year before Reputable economists predict it will increase by another $5 billion or so this year In the last six years of the Reagan presidency the federal budget deficit has topped $200 billion on three occasions and has never fallen below $150 billion Ronald Reagan's legacy includes as well a law that requires a balanced budget in 1993 — one year after the next presidential election matters we become bilingual today and perhaps tomorrow when the Vietnamese consolidate a trilingual state: and on and on Former Sen SI Hayakawa of California struggled while in office and continues to struggle on behalf of a clean sweep As a professional etymologist and literary sociologist Hayakawa has stressed the benefits of so to speak total immersion in the language of the country into which you are being introduced The trouble with the idea of bilingual America is that it tends not to happen What does happen is that people tend to concentrate on their own language to the exclusion of the other The statistics are not at hand but one's general sense of the situation confirms that as we encourage schools in which Spanish is spoken the pressure to learn English lessens And as this happens so also do corollary pressures lessen to introduce the immigrant into a new culture Although it has never been a part of the American rite of passage to require new citizens to jettison traditions they brought from the old country the objective has always been to induct them into a new country: the United States of America And here the lingua franca has been English We are poised at this moment in history to go in either direction Either toward a single language in which we transact our business and our poetry or else in two languages If we go in the latter direction we will encourage a cultural separatism that is distinctive in the American experience To go in that direction merely to save the immigrant from the brief pains of total immersion is a mistake Penny-wise King Features Syndicate spell-chec- I i I I v I don mean w o ko as in wok oi w ulk w a llu While House hailing heuvilv op the Ilex is de oiltlx ld U e of some W a1 I o who li the i i onoinu llu oi a s ol llu- ae ih Ip) Men on o it s In me w In p i d ' ha' a b a ' t i m a m f r i I 1 I i can hear the voice of Miss McCardle “Maybe you mean dizzy here" Miss McCardle says with a condescending little smile “No I don't mean dizzy" mumble at the machine “She might also be dizzy but mainly she's ditsy " “Perhaps dozy duets or diets" I can hear Miss McCardle saying in a voice that somehow has grown even more nasal over the years “No not dozy duets or diets" I say “There's no such thing as a duets starlet But doesn't understand me I'll admit that it dues everything the instructions for my program claim it will do When I command it to go over what I ve written it stops to highlight any word that can t be found in its supply of 100000 correctly spelled words When it does that it offers an arrav of correctly spelled words close enough to the mangled word so that one of them might have been what had in mind It does all this Without shaking its head in frus-teacher Miss at ion the way my fourth-gradMcCardle used to shake her head in frustra lion when she was my That s all just fine I appreciate it And I certainly appreciate the fact that my spell cla ck unlike Miss McCardle never says anyon sole vuti don t need sonic thin" like extra help'' St'd my spe1' check doesn t nu del stand me Some of Ihc wolds Dial stop mv spell check aient misspelled at all they ic just winds use that ale unfamiliai to mv spell Ills lie el happened W it !l M Iss MeCar cheek die might as wi I! admit thit when I was in fourth Cl ade Used some w ol ds that w el e pi e snmiMv in’ u" div to M'ss Mcl'aidle hot that was out on the pluvgtound If she had heat d those pa lull la t winds she w on Id ha e done mme Ilian offer an attav of cmtocilv spelled woiis that might have had in mind Bill my Spell check sees all till wolds use lake t he wold Wiek" M sp li h k Is d w as s slopped h w a ko M sp II he g Hunks mean waekx ol waxv Ot war 01 whelk m spell-chec- ! d Brings Back Miss McCardle Spell-Chec- k My Few politicians see any real prospect of halting the hemorrhage by then Wrhat in- trigues them more is the prospect of masking the deficit by tapping Social Security funds Increases in Social Security taxes enacted in 1983 ensure that this nest egg will continue to grow steadily In theory it will peak at the astronomical sum of $12 trillion in the year 2030 (That would amount to 30 percent of the nation's entire gross national product or enough money to buy every listed company on the New York Stock Exchange) But after that point when today's baby boomers begin to claim their retirement checks benefit payments are projected to ex-- ' ceed payroll taxes — until the accumulated reserv e is altogether wiped out about 20 years actuarial calculations later Such long-tercarry an unreal quality It's altogether likely that a president (who might not even be born yet) will fiddle with the books well before Social Security slips into the red It appears even more certain that as the surplus of Social Security payroll taxes over actual pension outlays continues to grow over the next decade it will be used to camouflage the real scope of the federal deficit In 1988 for example the deficit would have been $40 billion higher had not the payroll tax surplus (which is treated as part of the regular budget) been borrowed and spent by the Treasury to ease the crunch Here's the tricky part Under law the Social Security trust fund must invest all of its reserves in Treasury IOUs But the interest that the Treasury owes to the Social Security system is treated as an internal debt “Accrued interest is a bookkeeping entry: it's never paid" notes George D Gould the treasury undersecretary charged with managing the debt So the “interest payments" to the fund amount to no more than a government pledge to tax or borrow enough money at some future point to cover the inevitable pension demands (Actual “cash” in the trust fund is the difference between whatever Social Security taxes are collected and the benefits paid out interest income is excluded) That's something that rarely comes up when candidates talk about the need to preserve the “integrity" of Social Security Nor do we hear much about how future generations are being saddled w’'h their own retirement bills (Actually since the surplus is being loaned out the future generation that must repay those loans must therefore pay for both its own and its parents' retirement ) One solution is to exclude Social Security trust funds from the overall general budget They could then be used for growth-orientepurposes or else loaned back to underwrite individual investment accounts In any event they no longer could be used to hide the actual scope of the deficit But the new president isn't likely to act the numbers look bad enough even when a temporary bonanza hides their truly awful in Mense s Justice Department is not a wacko although if the word ever “ got out lie could presumably lose his job How could my expect me to get through eight years of Reagan administration without the word wacko'1 A computer freak friend of mine told me that I could train my spell check not to stop at any unusual hut correctly spelled won! that intended to use a lot He said that there s a wav to add sav the word wacko to the winds the spell check already knows so that it w ou Ido t alw u s get the imp less ion that w as living to call someone in the Justice Depart You can simply inform the ment a walkwax he said spell i heck It s nolle of Hie spell check S business uni tiu-- t doll the spell cheek When the spell clu ck stop at one of mv coitectlv spelled wonls can somehow hear the voice ol Miss Met 'it die That would he irritating even if Miss McCardle had not had a paricu ln it itit mg nice et sav thit make a to a talk show host d glam'iiiL’ cussing tin iin amni’ ol life with some Mils one high official spell-chec- I I I v v slaih't doesn Mv I a1 lit out hunt It uxt and of ei s me w spellcheck t av iin Hung light - Hu w oi d in all o a pulpahlv in at it In m fit ol :lu y i f ' stop- H v high hat it at go mu' me pas-altei mile spi Mini's m m m i Ditsy ' "Doze or daze'1' she continues "I don t have to listen to you Miss McCardle" I say astonishing myself with my boldness Doze daze — mean those days — are over " Bobby Carpenter would never misspell dizzv" Miss McCardle savs referring to the spelling bee winner m mv fourth grade class And Bobby Carpenter would never he disrespectful to his teacher You re absolutely right he wouldn I “ I because Bobby Cut pouter was a wonk “ say I t luil tins ends the g' un impies-uo— oi an upbeat and forthright note — but then when I spell check vlial ve written the spell check slops at wonk It highlights t lie wold ill yellow and as read the alternate spellings I can hear the oi'T of Miss Mci'ai die going on and on mi must wink Miss Mct'aidle saw i 1 I v ' nn-ai- in IV In- w oil Ol tet lost W nu ll McCanlii sav w ilh y on Miss Met ii roes on Me-- s I lake y mu spell check Df w lu’iu'e w ( nice n vv alkw av rc i: nd ( j t |