Sound familiar? “A great, gray gloom overhangs Washington these days – the enormous deficits, past, present and future, that threaten American prosperity. Everyone says they’re frightening: no one agrees what can be done about them.”

That was the lead paragraph on an Associated Press story on Nov. 14, 1983, which featured the frustrating efforts of a worried Kansas U.S. senator to get something, almost anything, done to bring changes for the better.

Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas said he worried about the consequences of a debt so big that the annual interest payment in five or six years would consume $250 million. Again, this was 25 years ago. What is that mushrooming figure now?

With Congress allegedly agonizing over million-dollar spending cuts in 1983, it was money, Dole emphasized, that “doesn’t help a single American, doesn’t build any homes, doesn’t build any highways, doesn’t help any farmers, doesn’t help any working people.”

Dole, once noted for the ruthless edge on his political knife, only recently had been hailed by a colleague as “the great compromiser.” That title was prompted by his effort, unsuccessful to date, to find an acceptable formula for reducing the federal deficit. He had encountered opposition both from President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill.

Dole, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told the AP that the American people were demanding more from the government than they were willing to pay for. Referring to Reagan’s 1980 election effort contending there could be a big tax cut, a big defense buildup and a balanced budget, the Kansas senator said the one factor Reagan did not foresee was a rather long and very deep recession, then in progress. Had there been no recession, Dole said, the deficit might have been manageable.

The mortgage rates were 13.6 percent in 1983. Said Dole: “If we could get them down to 10.5 percent we would have a boom that would last and a boom that would really put people back to work.”

Was there any end in sight? Dole wasn’t hopeful. “We get these pressures from our constituents who want more but don’t want the deficits to go up,” he said. “It’s more than just a political problem : It’s got to be a balanced package of spending restraint and revenue increases.”

Were 1983 constituents ahead of the politicians? From Dole: “Most people think that when you’re in debt you’ve got a problem. They may not understand the $200 billion a year deficit but they understand when the government is paying $147 billion a year in interest that’s going to increase to $250 billion in six years, they think we’ve lost our minds in Washington. I hope they’re not right.”

As the popular song notes, “everything old is new again.” While there were Bob Doles willing to step up 25 years ago to help steer us from a recessionary morass, where are such leaders now?

Like a terrifying storm, that great, gray gloom of 1983 is overhanging Washington again. Only it’s darker and more menacing now than it was 25 years ago.