Former U.S. Senators Warren Rudman and Paul Tsongas '62 will speak at the College Nov. 15 as part of an effort to focus attention on the perils of the federal deficit in the politically crucial state of New Hampshire.
Rudman and Tsongas are co-founders of the Concord Coalition, a group dedicated to encouraging politicians to address the deficit. In September they unveiled their Zero Deficit Plan, which would cut projected federal spending by $154 billion a year and balance the federal budget by the turn of the century.
Much of the savings would come from an entitlement program that would scale back Social Security and Medicare benefits for middle and upper income families. The remainder would come from higher taxes.
The lecture, "Deficit Reduction, A Balanced Budget and Our Future: The Concord Coalition Plan," will be held in Webster Hall at 7:30 p.m.
Bill Crowley, the Coalition's regional organizer, said the lecture at the College is part of the Coalition's attempt to lay the ideological groundwork for the 1996 presidential election.
"There is no place more important than New Hampshire in terms of deciding the public debate," Crowley said.
Tsongas, a candidate for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, won the New Hampshire primary before yielding to Bill Clinton later in the campaign. Tsongas garnered more than double the number of votes that Clinton received in the Hanover area.
"He has a lot of supporters in Hanover," said Student Assembly Representative Matthew Berry '94. "Maybe there is a big audience for his message. I think most students would agree with the majority of his plan."
Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, is best known for co-authoring the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which required cuts in federal spending during any fiscal year the budget deficit exceeded a prescribed maximum by more than a specific sum.
Although supporters claimed the deficit would have been even higher without it, The New York Times called the act a gimmick which hid the true cost of federal programs. The act was abandoned in 1990.
Rudman left the Senate in 1992 because of dissatisfaction with the country's fiscal situation.
Government Professor Richard Winters said the Rudman-Tsongas plan is "a very interesting deficit-reduction package for which there is no support in the Congress or the White House."
"It's very easy to generate well-designed and interesting deficit reduction packages when you don't have to get re-elected," Winters said.
Under the Zero Deficit Plan, retired families with incomes of $40,000 a year or less would continue to receive full Social Security and Medicare benefits.
For each additional $10,000 in annual income, the monthly Social Security check for a family would be cut by 10 percent.
For example, a retired family with a $80,000 income would receive 60 percent of the entitlements they receive now, and a family with a $100,000 a year income would receive 40 percent of their normal benefits.
No more than 85 percent of the entitlements can be cut even for the wealthiest families.
The Concord Coalition's plan would also require higher taxes such as a possible 50-cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax, severe limitation in the deductibility of mortgage interest for better-off homeowners, higher sin taxes and a rise in the Social Security retirement age to 68.
"The emphasis on cutting entitlements is quite good and more politicians should favor this, but raising taxes is not the answer," Berry said. "We don't have a deficit because the government taxes too little. We have a deficit because the government spends too much."
The Concord Coalition is attempting to build "an active organization that will continue the educational process and regularly press candidates on the issue" of deficit-reduction, Crowley said.
