BOSTON — Sen. John F. Kerry has given scores of policy speeches in his bid for the presidency, issued reams of position papers, and guided the 37-page platform on major issues that the Democratic National Convention will adopt today.
But Kerry and the platform are vague or silent on some of the far-reaching issues that will confront the next president: how to address the burgeoning budget deficit and the financial instability of Social Security and Medicare.
Kerry has said he wants to halve the deficit in four years, but independent experts have questioned whether that promise squares with costly domestic initiatives he has proposed. And he has offered few details on how he would handle the bigger problems that loom after 2008, when large numbers of baby boomers begin to draw government retirement benefits.
In that, Kerry is not unlike President Bush, who has been equivocal on how he would solve these problems that could hem in other programs for years.
Bush has also promised to halve the deficit in four years, but has overseen huge increases in spending. He has called for a Social Security overhaul, but has not specified how the changes would ensure the program's long-term solvency.
The upshot: Bush and Kerry are portraying this election as a momentous turning point in the nation's direction -- but without spelling out their differences on some of the toughest choices the next administration will face.
"It should not be surprising that no one wants to talk about these [issues] in the middle of an election year, but that is what is going to be badly needed once this election is over," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration official who directs economics studies at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. " ... Neither [candidate] has a plan for what to do after four years, when the problem gets much, much worse."
The coming challenges are as daunting as they are inescapable. Medicare is due to run out of money in 2019. Social Security's trust fund will be insolvent in 2052, but it is projected that as soon as 2019, the program will pay out more than it collects.
All of that darkens an already grim budget outlook. Even if Bush succeeded in halving by 2008 the shortfall -- estimated for this year at $477 billion -- it would leave deficits of more than $200 billion annually through 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And deficits would likely rise near the end of the decade, the CBO projects.
