Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 21, 1995                   TAG: 9511210070
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOW GET TO WORK ON A BUDGET PLAN

It wasn't just about petulance.

To be sure, House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested last week that he helped orchestrate the budget showdown because President Clinton snubbed him aboard Air Force One, on the flight to Yitzhak Rabin's funeral.

It's not plausible, however, that parts of the federal government were closed nearly a week and almost a million employees were shut out of work simply because Gingrich felt slighted.

Nor is it reasonable to assume that Bill Clinton adopted his get-tough stance with Congress only to counter an image as the president with the gelatinous spine.

Yes, the shutdown was as avoidable as it was ugly - an embarrassment for both sides - and politics was the primary cause. But politics isn't just about politicians and parties competing for privilege and power.

However disgraceful this episode, the political charade of the past week was in fact a curtain-opener for a more fundamental conflict over real issues, over decisions that will make winners and losers not just of politicians, but of populations.

The real dispute wasn't about the stopgap spending resolutions that prompted the shutdown; it was and is about the budget-balancing plan that the Republican Congress has just passed. The question now is: How will this debate be resolved?

Posturing and sparring are unavoidable, of course, especially as the presidential election draws closer. But are they all we can expect? Or will a genuine attempt be made to negotiate a budget compromise with which both the White House and Republicans - and all Americans - can live?

As a substitute for a policy of their own, President Clinton and the Democrats may well continue to scare seniors about GOP plans to gut Medicare. Never mind that Medicare, unreformed, is on an unsustainable course. Republicans made Democratic demagoguery even easier by making higher Medicare premiums a condition for keeping the government running.

Now, if the GOP continues to insist on big tax breaks for the well-off, funded by budget cuts hitting the working classes, Democrats may find the standing-tall no-deal option too attractive to resist.

Whether or not that would be effective politically in the short term, with Americans who want a balanced budget but without any cuts in programs that affect them, such a strategy would be bad for the country because it would put off needed entitlement reforms.

The primary source of federal red ink, keep in mind, isn't the sort of programs that were shut down last week - national parks and such. The problem is with the checks that kept coming: entitlement spending, much of it for the middle classes.

A deal can be had. In return for easing the unconscionable harm the Gingrich program would do to the poor and working classes, while also reducing its benefits to the well-off, the budget could be balanced within a given number of years.

Such a budget plan would require a willingness to put aside sparring and posturing for negotiation and compromise. It would require a show of leadership not much in evidence today in Washington. And it would require a readiness to put everything - including entitlements, the military, and welfare for the well-off - on the table.

Too much to ask? It shouldn't be.