Pay Those S&L Bills Now
Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who helped steer New York City out its bankruptcy a decade ago, recently gave the National Press Club a formula for dealing with the escalating savings and loan fiasco.</br></br>Instead of turning the present $130 billion problem into a $500 billion one (through added interest costs over 30 years), Rohatyn proposed a 5 percent temporary increase on tax rates, across the board until the bill is paid off. The surcharge would produce $25 billion to $30 billion a year, winding up the problem in about four years' time and relieving our children from paying "for our own stupidity."</br></br>In Omaha, systems analyst Renee Wickes-a Republican who voted for George Bush in 1988-heard Rohatyn's speech over National Public Radio. "Your comments ... were so practical and reasonable, it seems incredible that our political leaders are not lifting these ideas, repackaging them and proffering them as their brainchild," she wrote him.</br></br>But Rohatyn's mailbag, while full of kudos from thoughtful citizens, did not yield a single endorsement from a Washington politician.</br></br>Members of his own Democratic Party resist taking any initiative to raise taxes. Says a prominent congressional Democrat: "Rohatyn's proposal is a nonstarter. We would have enough trouble raising taxes for more appealing purposes. No one up here wants to vote for an income-tax increase, especially one aimed at the S&L crisis."