THE EROSION OF MARRIAGE

Scripps Howard: The latest Census figures tell us that the last 10 years have shown no letup in the beating marriage is taking in American society. More and more people are opting for other arrangements, even when they have children, and that's when the trend results in catastrophe, even though some will tell you it doesn't have to, that single parents can do splendidly on their own, especially with help from enlarged governmental programs.
Some single parents do achieve remarkable results in raising their offspring. It helps if they have heroic character. But not all single parents do, and the irrefutable truth is that many struggle in the effort to serve the best interests of their children and that many fail. The truth is that their children are more likely to be raised in poverty than those raised in married-couple households and that their children are less likely to be highly educated or to stay out of legal trouble.
Sociological studies: More government programs will never generally provide the sort of well-rounded, sustained nurturing provided by married-couple families. History attests as much, as do current sociological studies. The hope has to be that the decline can be halted and reversed -- that divorce rates will gradually retreat to something more sane, that out-of-wedlock births will gradually be reduced in number. It is less an issue of political will than of cultural will; it is an issue of people rethinking certain values.
A central value has to be this one -- that when two people bring a new life into this world, they have a special responsibility for that life, even if it means giving up some portion of what they view as individual self-fulfillment.
TAX MICE
Washington Post: The Senate's self-styled centrists have now made enough of what they are pleased to call improvements in the president's tax-cut plan that they appear prepared to support it. Their acquiescence is a lesson in how little if anything centrism means in Congress today. By any standard other than its own low starting point, the bill remains insupportable. The middle-roaders of both parties who had rightly objected to it in its original form -- John Breaux, Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe -- have only nibbled at it. But the nibbles appear to be enough for them. They have succeeded in distancing themselves politically from the thrust of a bill that they will now let pass.
The bill was, and still is, flawed in two respects -- cost and tilt. The centrists made much of having forced a reduction in the nominal cost from the president's proposed $1.6 trillion over 10 years to now about $1.3 trillion. But in fact that is mainly a paper reduction, as the centrists well understand; so does every other senator who will make a speech on the subject in the next two weeks. Gimmicks have been used to make it look as if the bill will fit within a limit that it will greatly exceed. The measure is hugely backloaded. Effective dates of almost all the major provisions have been deferred to obscure their cost. Other costs that clearly will be incurred have simply been ignored.
Artificial squeezing: The Senate Finance Committee marked up its centrified bill this week. The income-tax cuts are supposed to be smaller than in the president's plan. But on an annual basis when fully effective, by one estimate they could cost as much as one-sixth more than his; that is how much artificial squeezing the authors engaged in. The cost of the bill in its second 10 years, when all provisions would be fully effective, is likely to be in excess of $4 trillion. Nor, Republicans say, will this be the year's only tax cut; others are likely to be attached to the pending minimum-wage increase and so-called patients' bill of rights, regulating managed care.
The moderates claim to have altered the tilt of the president's proposal as well, and they have, but again on the margin. The Finance Committee bill would reduce the top income-tax rate from 39.6 percent to 36 percent rather than the 33 percent that remains the president's goal, and it adds some benefits for lower-income taxpayers. The changes are in the right direction, but a third of the benefit would still go to the top 1 percent of all taxpayers, and an estimated 70 percent to the top fifth. The bottom four-fifths would get only a couple of percentage points more than under the president's proposals.
The committee bill remains a gift to the better-off that in the long run, assuming it or similar legislation passes, will leave the government with fewer resources to meet its obligations. The full cost will begin to be felt just as the baby boomers retire.
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED -- SORT OF
Scripps Howard News Service: If President Bush was the candidate of lowered expectations, Italy's new prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was the candidate of inflated expectations -- his own.
In a Newt Gingrich-like "Contract with Italy," he pledged five goals -- lower taxes, less crime, higher pensions, leaner bureaucracy and plenty of public works projects -- and promised to resign if he doesn't achieve four. And he plans to do this while under indictment for bribery and tax fraud.
One other problem: His fellow European leaders have no wish to see him succeed; they are leftist and he is conservative. While the United States seems to be getting less and less popular with European governments, Berlusconi is unabashedly pro-American and an outspoken admirer of American business and government.
Even neutral observers question whether Berlusconi can carry out his promises without driving Italy into unacceptable levels of debt, and even there he is constrained by the fiscal standards of the European Union. Italy will benefit if he can accomplish even some of his goals, let alone all five.
As for resigning, Berlusconi has given himself five years to achieve at least four of the goals -- that's two years and a month longer than any postwar Italian government has served.