DANFORTH TO FOCUS ON FEDERAL DEFICIT

During John Danforth's last term in the U.S. Senate, the veteran Missouri legislator became an expert on the federal deficit. In one of his final efforts to seek solutions to the never-ending cost of government, Danforth and Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska chaired a bipartisan commission that examined entitlements, those massive funding programs such as Social Security and Medicare on which the country has grown dependent.

The Danforth-Kerrey report, which was an alarming analysis of the future entitlement burden, forecast that by 2012 the government would have to spend all of its revenue on entitlements and interest on the debt with nothing left over for any other federal needs, including the military. The report failed to generate changes. There are several reasons why. The first is that the Danforth-Kerrey commission couldn't agree on any easy or simple method of solving the funding nightmare of entitlements. Another reason is that beneficiaries of entitlements have grown so attached to them that they won't listen to serious discussions about cuts or growth containment. And, of course, another reason is that politicians understand it would be political suicide to mess too much with entitlements.

Now that he has left the Senate, Danforth isn't content to practice law and do philanthropic work in his native St. Louis. He has joined forces with a former congressman, Democrat Tim Penny of Minnesota, to work with Coalition for Change, a nonpartisan group outside the confines of Congress dedicated to ending the federal deficit. The coalition has broad support from such groups as United We Stand, the Business Roundtable and the Seniors Coalition.

The deficit, of course, hasn't gone unnoticed. Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have plans to balance the budget, although there is considerable disagreement on how quickly it can be done. And while the GOP plan includes slower increases in Medicare spending, no plan currently on the table talks about actual cuts in any entitlement programs.

That's were Danforth and Penny come in. The Coalition for Change maintains that any real effort to balance the budget will require cuts throughout government, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and federal retirement programs.

Both men plan to use their influence as career deficit-busters to draw attention to the argument that entitlements must be considered in bringing the deficit under control. Their battle will remind too many political realists of Don Quixote and all those windmills. But don't underestimate the influence Danforth and Penny will be able to exert.

Somehow, sometime, the nation will either find a way to control federal spending. Or the country will be flat broke. Neither choice is pretty, but managing spending is far better than not having anything to spend.