Perot is back, charts and all, to take on U.S. deficit spending

That giant sucking sound? It’s all the data rushing to fill PerotCharts.com.

As the Associated Press reports today: "Billionaire former presidential candidate Ross Perot has started a website to highlight what he calls the ‘economic crisis’ facing the country because of deficit spending.

"The website announced Monday is . . . a play on Perot’s use of economic charts in political advertisements during his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns."

If you saw his ads during those campaigns, it may be that you remember Perot -- or his caricature -- more than the details of his message, voiced in that thick Texas accent.

The 77-year-old Perot, who founded the tech services firm Electronic Data Systems, railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992, predicting that it would produce a "giant sucking sound" as companies moved jobs from the U.S. to Mexico.

But federal deficit spending was his major peeve. The deficit reached a then-record $290 billion in fiscal 1992.

Maybe Perot helped the victor in the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton, get the message. Clinton presided over a dramatic shrinkage of the deficit; by 1996 it had been cut by nearly two-thirds from the ’92 level. By 1999 the Treasury was running a surplus.

But since 2001 the red ink has flowed heavily once again. The Congressional Budget Office projects a fiscal 2008 deficit of $357 billion, more than twice the 2007 level.

Perot’s message -- that we can’t keep spending like this -- actually is far more relevant today than it was in 1992, because of looming Social Security and Medicare costs for retiring baby boomers.

You just can’t help wondering where the guy has been for the last few years, as the deficits have continued to pile up. Why wait for an election year?

"The American people must wake up and face the reality that promises made in the past will soon bankrupt this nation," Perot says on the website. "Over time, our standard of living, our national security, our standing in the world and the value of our currency could all be threatened."

It’s also strange that he puts all of that in the future tense -- as if nothing bad has yet happened to Americans’ standard of living or to the dollar’s value.

Photo: Ross Perot testifying before a California Senate committee in 2002. Perot denied that his consulting company showed power suppliers how to manipulate California's energy market to drive up wholesale prices. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Did you sacrifice your retirement plan for the house?

From Times staff writer Walter Hamilton:

The national housing obsession in recent years may have dulled the urge to invest in 401(k) retirement plans.

After expanding strongly throughout the 1990s, participation in 401(k) and other employee-funded retirement plans has grown more slowly in recent years, according to data released today by a Washington-based research group. (PDF of report highlights.)

The number of people investing in 401(k) and similar plans climbed from 42.2 million in 1995 to 50.9 million in 2000, the Employee Benefit Research Institute said. From there, though, participation rose only to 52.2 million through 2004, the institute said.

There are several reasons for that, including fewer small companies offering plans and lingering investor concerns about the stock market after the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, said Craig Copeland, author of the study.

But the preoccupation with housing played a role, Copeland said, as some people earmarked cash for new or remodeled dwellings as home prices surged instead of funding retirement accounts.

People considered housing to be "the big investment," he said.

Of course, for some people, their home is their retirement plan. But with prices now sliding, the long-term payoff may be a lot less certain.

As for 401(k) plans, the mean annual contribution amount inched up from $4,607 in 2001 to $4,993 in 2005, according to the study.

Plan participation rates are likely to pick up in coming years because the government has given companies legal clearance to automatically enroll workers in 401(k)s.

Nevertheless, the study showed that many people still fail to put enough emphasis of retirement saving, Copeland said. "It shows that people aren't getting the message that they're going to have to do more to plan for their retirement," he said.