Bush’s plan, less clear on the details, has a price tag of $158 billion. He says he will work with Congress to reform Medicare. Until then, he will provide $48 billion to the states to help low-income seniors pay for their drugs. The rest of the money would cover at least 25 percent of the premiums for seniors buying health insurance, including drug coverage, from private insurers or Medicare. All prescriptions are covered after $6,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. Both plans, which are voluntary, cover pre-existing conditions and pay all costs for seniors with incomes below $11,300.
As an expansion of Medicare, Gore’s plan builds on an imperfect but generally dependable system that serves some 39 million seniors. Bush’s plan, preferred by drugmakers and insurance companies, is intended to offer seniors wider choices. –David Noonan
Social Security Both candidates are discussing Social Security’s long-term problems, which is good. But neither will admit publicly that the only way to manage the baby boomers’ retirement is to raise Social Security taxes to the moon, increase the retirement age and scale back benefits in other ways, or to stuff trillions of dollars into the system.
Bush wants to let wage earners open individual accounts. But he won’t acknowledge the obvious: that anyone who opens an individual account would have to accept a lower government-paid benefit, and might end up worse off. As for long-term problems, Bush says that he’ll set up a bipartisan group to deal with them. He’ll be the good guy; the bipartisan group, the bad guys.
In place of individual accounts, open to everyone, Gore would set up Retirement Savings Plus accounts, with the government matching contributions for people within certain income limits. He wants to not only keep Social Security’s existing benefit formula, but to enhance it. He’d do this by diverting untold trillions into Social Security; he won’t say how many. Of course, when crunch time comes in 2015 or so, and Social Security’s cash deficits are projected to begin, a second-term Gore or Bush presidency would be long over. –Allan Sloan
Eduction Education may be a local issue, but you wouldn’t know it this year. Photos of Bush and Gore posing in classrooms have been as common as campaign bumper stickers. Voters say that education is one of their top priorities, requiring the presidential candidates to show how Washington can make a difference in neighborhood schools.
Both want to do more to hold schools accountable for results. Bush would require students in grades three to eight to sit every year for a test developed by their own state. Gore wants every American kid to take the National Assessment of Educational Progress, developed and administered by the federal government.
If some public schools fall short of the goals Bush would put in place, families would get vouchers to help pay for a private education. He failed to persuade the Texas Legislature to pass such a plan, but his brother Jeb, Florida’s governor, is testing a similar program in his state. Gore says no to public money going to private schools. Instead, he would encourage forming expert turnaround teams to resuscitate failing schools. He would make new public-school teachers take competency tests, and he would link bonuses to student performance. Both candidates encourage charter schools, which operate within public systems but with greater independence. Gore would triple the number of charter schools, while Bush wants to see their numbers double.
Distancing himself from the old GOP calls to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, Bush would not only keep the bureaucracy but expand it to include the successful preschool program Head Start. Gore would go further, spending $50 billion to establish universal preschool education.
In all, both propose spending a lot more money on education: Gore’s programs add up to $170 billion in new spending, Bush’s up to $47 billion. While the breadth of their ideas is also impressive, many voters realize that 90 percent of school funding comes from local and state sources. It’s unclear that any president can be an effective school superintendent–but that hasn’t stopped them from hoping voters give them extra credit for trying. – Pat Wingert Foreign Intervention For the most part, foreign policy hasn’t been much of a factor in this campaign. One reason is that there don’t seem to be sharp differences between the candidates. Another is that Washington’s relative power in the world is so great that Americans feel less of a threat from overseas than they have for decades. Even the alleged terrorist attack on the USS Cole and the blowup in the Middle East haven’t resonated as issues. But while both Gore and Bush would maintain America’s central role in world affairs, they do part ways in some critical areas. The vice president espouses “forward engagement,” or a much more interventionist approach, especially to humanitarian crises; the Texas governor would scale back U.S. involvement in peacekeeping.
Bush sees the U.S. role as one of intervener of last resort in major conflicts; the U.S. military, he believes, should be reserved to keep global, not regional, peace. But while he wants to stress big-power relationships with friends like Britain and Germany, he also wants to withdraw from NATO peacekeeping, scrap the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and install a major missile defense program, moves that would likely estrange Washington from its key allies.
Gore, meanwhile, has tried to redefine the entire national-security agenda, stressing the social and economic instability that might come from environmental disaster, AIDS or the gulf between rich and poor nations. But he sets no clear priorities–perhaps because it may be impossible to do so in the post-cold-war era. – Michael Hirsh
Taxes Philosophically, Gore and Bush are miles apart on taxes. In 1999 federal taxes hit a post-World War II record 20 percent of gross domestic product. Bush thinks that’s too high. He proposes $1.3 trillion of tax cuts between 2001 and 2010 out of $4.6 trillion of projected budget surpluses. Gore says more of the surpluses should go to reducing the federal debt and paying for new school and health programs. His tax cuts would total $500 billion.
Almost everything Bush and Gore say about the other’s program contains some truth. Bush’s plan would–as Gore says–give big tax cuts to the wealthy. That’s because Bush would cut taxes across the board–and the rich pay most taxes. In 2000 the richest fifth of Americans (incomes above $82,000) will pay three quarters of income taxes. In this group, the richest 1 percent (incomes above $347,000) pay a third of income taxes. Under Bush, today’s rates of 15 to 39.6 percent would fall to 10 to 33 percent.
Who gains? Gore says that 42 percent of the benefits go to the richest 1 percent; Bush says the figure is only 21 percent. The truth lies in between; just where, no one knows.
It’s also true–as Bush says–that Gore’s tax program amounts to roulette: fewer people would benefit, and the proposals are so complex that it’s hard to know precisely who gains and how much. Gore’s plan features “targeted” tax breaks for saving, child care, college tuition and long-term-care givers–among others.
Gore’s biggest item, costing an estimated $200 billion over 10 years, provides tax credits for new retirement-savings accounts. The benefit falls as people’s incomes rise. A couple with less than $30,000 of income could receive a $1,500 tax credit–a tax cut–for putting $500 in a savings account. A couple with more than $60,000 of income gets a tax credit of only $500 for saving $1,500. The aim: to prod poorer families to save more. The benefit ends above incomes of $100,000 for couples ($50,000 for singles). To cut costs, Gore phases in the benefit so it doesn’t become fully effective until 2009.
Comparing the plans for individual taxpayers isn’t easy. For families with children, Gore’s plan could be as generous as Bush’s or perhaps more–depending on whether the family qualified for many targeted tax breaks. In contrast, many couples and single taxpayers without children might do better under Bush. Taxpayers above $100,000 would fare better under Bush.
Bottom line: campaign rhetoric–from both sides–is believable. – Robert J. Samuelson
Oil Prices and the Environment The sharp rise in oil and gas prices has thrown off campaign sparks. Gore has criticized Bush and Cheney–both former oil-industry executives–as the “Big Oil’’ ticket, and has railed against U.S. oil companies for sharp price hikes at the pump. Bush has attacked the Clinton administration for lacking an energy policy–and Gore himself for changing positions by urging the government to release oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Energy policy has not played such a central role in a presidential campaign since 1980.
Their stands on a number of key issues highlight sharp differences. Bush, for instance, has said that Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be opened up for drilling; Gore is opposed. Gore supports an international agreement on global warming reached three years ago in Kyoto, Japan, to drastically reduce emissions of industrial gases; Bush says the treaty would carry too heavy a cost for the United States.
In general, Bush is for increasing the supply of energy sources, while Gore advocates reducing demand through conservation. But Bush and Gore both support, to varying degrees, more drilling in this country. And they have each suggested programs to promote energy efficiency and conservation, and to ease the cost of heating oil for poor families. They are also both proponents of deregulating the electric-power industry to foster competition. Bush has called for looser regulations for building oil refineries and pipelines. Gore would give tax credits to families who buy fuel-efficient cars and sport utility vehicles. – Adam Bryant
Supreme Court The next president could move the Supreme Court dramatically to the liberal or the conservative side for many years to come. The current court is exquisitely balanced: four liberals, three conservatives and two centrists who lean sometimes right (especially on race and federal regulatory power) and sometimes left (especially on abortion and gay rights). Both candidates would like to change that calculus.
Warning (hyperbolically) that a Bush victory would doom abortion rights, Gore vows to ensure a “living Constitution” by seeking people modeled on two of the most liberal justices in history, the late William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, both of whom supported a judicial guarantee of virtually unrestricted access to abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Bush prefers “strict construction” and praises two of the court’s most conservative members since the 1930s, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Both would return the abortion issue to elected representatives. Substituting anti-abortion conservatives for two of the six current justices who support fairly broad abortion rights–a long shot, to be sure–could doom Roe v. Wade. Even a single strategic appointment could engineer dramatic change on issues including race-based and gender-based affirmative-action preferences, federal regulatory power, gay rights, freedom of speech, religion and campaign-finance reform. And even if the next president has no Supreme Court vacancies to fill, he will still make a difference: his roughly 200 appointments to lower federal courts will have a lasting impact. – Stuart Taylor Jr.
Immigration Bush and Gore are courting Latino and Asian voters as never before. But the nominees have not highlighted a potentially explosive issue for the next president: immigration. They agree that the INS needs reform. Gore proposes a sweeping internal restructuring. Bush would split the agency into two entities–one to handle services for the roughly 800,000 legal immigrants the country accepts each year and one to keep out the 400,000 illegals who skirt border patrols annually.
More divisive is the issue of amnesty. Gore backs the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act, which would allow visas for illegals in the country since 1986 and grant residency to migrants–predominantly Central American–who fled civil wars in the 1980s. Republicans support a less inclusive bill that focuses mainly on family reunification, but Bush has shied away from openly backing it. Bush is also silent on support for legal immigrants once they get here.
In the midst of one of the nation’s largest-ever waves of immigration, neither candidate is addressing a central issue: how many immigrants are too many? Right now unemployment is low and national sentiment toward immigration generally favorable. But with drastic demographic shifts spreading from places like California and New York to states like North Carolina, Arizona, Kansas and Idaho, who-ever is elected won’t be able to duck the issue for long. –Lynette Clemetson
Defense American military officers vocally support Bush, expecting him to open the bank. The reality is that under Bush, the services would face upheaval. Gore has defended the status quo, boasting that “our military is the strongest and best in the entire world”–and promising to keep it that way. Bush, by contrast, has called for a “division of labor” with longtime American allies as well as sweeping though unspecified cuts in new weapons programs.
The new president will command a U.S. military that has shrunk by a third since the cold war ended. American forces in Europe have been cut by almost three fourths. Nine in every 10 military family members now live on U.S. soil. That has turned the military largely into an expeditionary force–and inspired Bush’s charge that the Clinton administration has sent underfinanced divisions to meet overstretched commitments. This supposed overstretch is largely a myth. Claims of a threefold increase in deployments under Clinton come from a misread congressional report.
Two regions pose the problems. The Persian Gulf is a huge, new and open-ended U.S. commitment: precisely what Bush has been criticizing, even though it began with his father’s failure to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Now 20,000 U.S. troops are stationed in the region, and the Navy’s carrier fleet and some scarce Air Force aircraft for electronic warfare and command and control have been run ragged by the low-level war. Neither candidate has a plausible plan to overthrow Saddam, so the conflict presumably will continue.
In the Balkans, the U.S. Army (active strength: 475,000) complains about the difficulty of keeping 13,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo (one fifth of the NATO force there). The Army’s own structural problems are largely to blame. Bush says he would pull U.S. troops out of the Balkans and leave future peacekeeping missions to the Europeans–reserving the U.S. military for Big Wars only. European politicians warn this would cost the United States its leadership role in NATO, America’s main alliance.
Whoever wins, the military faces cuts. The United States’ $310 billion defense budget is already larger than the world’s next 12 military budgets combined, and three times the combined defense spending of Russia, China and seven “rogue” states, including North Korea and Libya. Still, by some measures, U.S. forces are underfunded. To replace all aging equipment would cost an extra $35 billion to $60 billion a year. To fully fund operations and maintenance would take at least an additional $10 billion. Neither candidate is promising that kind of money. Gore talks of an extra $100 billion over 10 years. Bush promises $45 billion, going mainly for research and development to hasten the next generation of weapons.
Here Bush appears the radical. Looking to predicted advances in computers, sensors and communications, he would “skip a generation” of weapons and instead push toward the truly revolutionary generation after next. That, says Gore, would be to gamble on uncertain future technologies. – John Barry
Gun Control The way Gore and Bush have both run from the gun issue this fall, you’d think it was chasing them with an assault rifle. During the primaries, Gore talked almost every day about his gun-safety agenda, which includes a plan to license all new gun buyers. (Current gun owners would need a license only if they bought another gun.) But anti-gun voters now seem less galvanized than they were after last year’s school shootings, and it turns out that union households–which are crucial to Gore’s strategy in key states–have an unusually high percentage of gun owners.
Bush is just as happy to let the issue sit quietly. He knows fervent gun-owners will support him anyway, given his strong pro-gun record in Texas and his cozy relationship with the National Rifle Association. As governor, he signed a law that allows citizens to carry concealed weapons, then expanded it to permit guns in churches and hospitals. But Bush also knows his stand on guns might not sound like “compassionate conservatism” to more moderate swing voters. He does favor some new and not-so-controversial gun-safety proposals, like making safety locks for handguns available and keeping assault-style weapons away from teenagers. His main proposal is to better enforce existing gun laws by giving federal prosecutors more resources–an idea Gore also supports.
No matter who’s elected, the prospects for any real progress aren’t promising. Congress hasn’t even been able to nail down an agreement on the need for background checks at gun shows. Bush won’t force the issue. And there’s little chance that Gore could wage a fight for gun licensing during a first term, let alone get it passed. – Matt Bai
