New York Times
Consumed by a possible war with Iraq, Congress is ignoring several urgent domestic priorities. The federal budget is slipping further into the red, but there is no agreement on what to do about it. Indeed, Republicans are sharply divided among themselves on spending. The latest Florida election debacle has failed to dislodge the House and Senate from their impasse on ballot reform. The homeland security measure remains mired in a dispute over the rights of workers in the new department. And the chances of passing legislation on energy, bankruptcy and a patients' bill of rights are slipping away each day.
Budget battles are as inevitable as elections. But this year the framework is defined by a widespread refusal in Washington to accept the obvious. The United States cannot wage a war, cut taxes and pay for the programs that Americans want without throwing the federal budget into deeper deficit. ...
Sooner or later there will have to be an agreement on the budget, which means that Congress should apply itself to reaching parallel agreements on other issues. ...
One long-shot measure that should be considered is welfare reform. A bipartisan coalition in the Senate favors re-enacting the welfare law with enough money for day care and other support for welfare recipients, and without the punitive work requirements and budget cuts in the House version. This group should keep trying. Congress cannot let the drums of war distract from its obligation to ensure fairness for the poorest Americans.
Washington Times
With the Dow Jones industrial average falling below 8,000 recently and approaching the four-year low it hit in July, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his colleagues understandably may feel reluctant tomorrow to lower short-term interest rates, fearing such action may be interpreted as an effort to prop up the stock market. Rightly so, the Fed should not be in the business of bailing out investors in the wake of the bursting of the stock-market bubble. Its primary responsibility must be the maintenance of long-term price stability. It is in the pursuit of this goal, as well as its secondary purpose of promoting economic growth, that the Fed should undertake to reduce short-term interest rates at its meeting tomorrow. In what would be its first interest-rate reduction this year, the Fed should lower its short-term target rate, the overnight federal funds rate, by one-quarter percentage point, from 1.75 percent to 1.5 percent. ...
As an internal study by the Fed itself concluded earlier this year, the failure of the Japanese central bank to aggressively and pre-emptively fight deflationary pressures significantly contributed to the deflationary spiral now afflicting the world's second-largest economy. Meanwhile, Germany, which confronts several of the same fiscal and structural problems as Japan, also faces mounting deflationary pressures as its economy appears to be re-entering recessionary territory. The prospect that the largest economies in Asia, Europe and the Americas could be simultaneously afflicted by the insidious, multiplying forces of deflation strongly suggests that now is the time for U.S. monetary stimulus. To prevent any misinterpretations among investors, the Fed should accompany its rate reduction with an explicitly worded statement declaring its intention to fight deflationary pressures.
Dallas Morning News
Having improved relations with South Korea, Russia and Japan, poor, desperate and heavily armed North Korea goes one better and reaches out to Washington. The Bush administration should reach back -- but with a latex glove on its shaking hand, its other hand on its wallet and a derringer in its boot.
The Communist satrapy's motives are not difficult to discern. It needs money. That doesn't make it any less dangerous or unpredictable. It has reached out before, only to renege on its promises and to turn aggressive again. Its large army is within easy striking distance of South Korea's capital and the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. The CIA believes that it has one or two nuclear bombs. "There's no reason to think that it would go out quietly," says Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. ...
The administration is rightly wary. North Korea has not admitted the international atomic inspectors that it agreed to admit in 1994, forbids supervision of international food aid distribution and uses its long-range missiles and mass-destruction weapons to blackmail countries into giving it food and energy. However, the recent hopeful developments are worth trying to exploit as an alternative to war. The administration's goal should be to make of North Korea another East Germany that peacefully transitions to democracy -- and to prevent it from becoming another turmoil-filled Romania with nuclear weapons.
Miami Herald
Nicaragua is one step closer to prosecuting former President Arnoldo Alemán. Last week, legislators voted to remove him as president of the National Assembly, and a new congressional committee is considering petitions to strip him of immunity.
Nicaragua's attorney general indicted Mr. Alemán and several of his relatives and cronies on charges related to stealing some $100 million from the government. But as outgoing president, he inherited a seat in the assembly, and the immunity that came with it.
The tide has turned. Though Mr. Alemán is the president of the governing Liberal Party, a growing number of its legislators support current President Enrique Bolaños' anti-corruption campaign. These legislators and those of the opposition Sandinista Party could push efforts to bring Mr. Alemán and company to court.
In Miami last week, President Bolaños spoke of what government can accomplish when money isn't stolen from it.
Tough as it may be, Mr. Bolaños' efforts to clean house and set Nicaragua on a solid footing are a breath of fresh air in a region wracked by public graft.
Honolulu Advertiser
Are we asking too much, trying to have it both ways? First we complain that the FBI and CIA failed to share and pursue clues that might have signaled the 9/11 tragedy. Then we complain that, in their zeal to prevent the next 9/11, security agencies are sometimes trampling all over citizens' rights.
No, we're not asking too much. We must have it both ways. Being both the land of the free and the home of the brave is inherently demanding, even in normal times.
Of course this nation, great at as it is, has witnessed serious and inexcusable lapses both in readiness, such as the outbreak of the Korean War, and in protection of rights, notably the internship of Americans of Japanese Ancestry in World War II. And we must guard against both kinds of lapses now, as tensions run high. ...
It behooves us in these times to be careful, in more ways than one. Right or wrong, the Georgia woman who insists she heard the men making remarks that suggested a terrorist attack did the right thing. She called authorities, who also did the right thing. They coordinated in ways that were largely unheard of before 9/11, and quickly flagged the men down.
That's the point where erring on the side of caution ends, however.
The media circus that followed the pursuit of the men, the decision by a Miami hospital to withdraw their jobs, the death threats, the 18-hour detention add up to wretched excess.
It was a false alarm, as it turns out. Odds are there will be many more false alarms. We have to learn to handle them with more grace and compassion.
The times call for alertness, not hysteria.
(Compiled by United Press International)
