Opinion For the sake of debate

Walker was the country’s chief auditor,serving from 1998 to 2008 as the US comptroller general. He is currently the chief executive of the Comeback America Initiative,a non partisan group dedicated to getting America’s fiscal house in order. Walker — who came in second to Hillary Clinton in a reader poll that Politico conducted last October for favourite Third Party candidate — told me he has no desire to run but that he’s been speaking across the country,trying to do what Perot did.

“He did three things,” says Walker. “He woke up the American people to the truth about our fiscal situation in clear,concise and compelling terms. He made the presidential debates much more substantive,and he helped to set the next president’s agenda,and,as a result,we made great progress in reducing the deficit from 1993 to 2000. Now we have lost all of that and more.”

Walker’s view is simple: “We are not Greece,where the government grew too big,promised too much and waited too long to restructure,but we’re making many of the same mistakes.” Because of the size of the US economy and the dollar’s role as a global reserve currency,we “have some time” to get our house in order,“but we are not immune from the laws of prudent finance.”

Alas,both of our major parties behave as though we are. The Democrats,argues Walker,“are still in denial about the need to renegotiate our social insurance contract.” Walker praises Obama for focusing on the right metric — our overall debt-to-GDP ratio — and in offering short-term ideas to enhance economic growth and address unemployment,like investments in infrastructure. But these ideas,he says,have to be “coupled with a credible and enforceable plan to address the structural deficits that threaten our nation’s future position in the world and our standard of living at home” — and there Obama continues to fall short.

As for Republicans,says Walker,“they don’t have a plan to restore fiscal sanity either. They’re in denial we can solve our structural deficit problems with either our current level of taxation — between 15 and 16 per cent of GDP — or even with our historical average,about 18 per cent of GDP. We need more revenue. Our deficit problem is primarily a spending problem,but it is not only a spending problem.” We need $1 in new revenue for every $3 in spending cuts,excluding interest,says Walker — and that should be accomplished through tax reform that makes our system “simpler,fairer and more competitive,” while generating more revenue. “The Republicans are in denial about this.”

The American people are “starved for three things,” concludes Walker: “truth,leadership and solutions.” Unfortunately,the two parties are just offering “laggardship — waiting for something to hit the fan” so they can again just react “without adequate due diligence.”

After months of nutty,gravity-free Republican primary debates,how great would it be to have presidential debates in which a smart independent like Walker was in the middle to challenge both sides and offer sensible solutions?