COMMON SENSE

We are suddenly confronted with a catastrophe which is both crisis and opportunity. Can we start with what my mother always considered the three basic questions to ask in such a situation:

What do we have lots of?

What do we need?

How do we turn what we have lots of into what we need?

Any comments on any of these points will be passed on to readers. My own immediate reactions: one of the things we have lots of is good ideas. Let's not let them go to waste.

Another thing we apparently have lots of is good will and eagerness to contribute.

What we need is, first of all, some way to meet the government's inescapable deficit from meeting relief and reconstruction needs without (given the tax priorities of God's Own Party) raising taxes.

Another thing we need is a way to encourage Americans to save more--we have one of the lowest rates of saving in the Western world, and we now know that retirees can no longer count on employer pensions to provide for them.

So: can we turn that energy and eagerness into a solution for the deficit and the relief needs of the Gulf Coast by starting a government relief bond drive? My husband is an old-time radio junkie, so I spend a lot of time overhearing broadcasts from World War II, when every other commercial urged the listeners to buy war bonds. Lots of them did, apparently, much to the benefit of the war effort. It was a way of harnessing the popular energy at the home front behind the "good war." Why can't we do this again? Use relief bonds as a way to both pay for Katrina relief and reconstruction, and fund the retirement of today's workforce. Please, pass this on. It's an idea whose time has come.