THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506240001
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Scarcity of free television time often frustrates the White House but sometimes works in President Clinton's favor.
Having only five minutes to announce while somersaulting that he'd joined the hunt for a balanced budget, his words were too few to reward scrutiny. And his zippy conclusion (``Let's get to work!'') seemed to say he was being restrained from noble work when only minutes before he'd been on record favoring budget deficits continuing indefinitely. It suggested further that the president was eager to begin whacking spending when actually he was proposing to take three years more than the Republicans to reach a balanced budget.
These may be minor points; then again, the president's may be a minor proposal. Ten years is a long time. Rather than being spread evenly, spending cuts would be concentrated near the end of the period - the ``out years'' as they're called; like Republicans, Clinton postpones the pain, only longer, and heightens the prospect that nothing much will be done.
Multiyear plans may be necessary, but none has succeeded (remember Gramm-Rudman?). While delaying spending cuts, the president joins House Republicans in insisting upon a tax cut - which at once makes a hard job harder and suggests a lack of will to do it: What's so urgent about balancing the budget when you can cut taxes, hike spending (as Clinton proposes on a number of programs) and delay spending reductions?
Regrettably, there's more - the unwelcome return of the fudged forecast. As Jodie Allen points out in The Washington Post, Clinton proposes to pare a budget deficit much smaller than the one the Republicans have to shrink. It's the same deficit, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates its size 10 years hence at $472 billion while Clinton figures it at $266 billion. As anyone can see, Clinton had the job half-finished before he'd concluded his five-minute speech. How can this be?
With marvelous understatement, Robert Reischauer, former director of the CBO, remarks: ``I don't think one can say the administration is guilty of terminal rosy scenario-itis, but its projections are on the optimistic side, and if achieving balance is an important objective, Congress' assumptions are certainly more prudent.'' Translation: Don't take the Clinton figures seriously.
Much is made of the point that the president has validated Republican claims that growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending must be reduced. There's that and, as well, his commendable embrace of budget-balancing as a bipartisan task - thus undercutting liberal Democrats who hoped to boost their fortunes by fearmongering and who now claim that Clinton is forever fickle.
This is not news, of course, and a week hence his flip-flop on the budget will be forgotten as well. What will remain will be the image of a president who stands with Republicans as a budget-balancer but one who will trim rather than slash, who will be humane rather than heartless, and who will cut taxes while combing every crumb out of reach of the rich. This is not bad for a president deemed irrelevant since his party collapsed at the polls. It is not burdened by principle either - especially the unblushing advocacy of a tax cut while debt is so large.
But he has got back into the game that gets more difficult by the day for congressional Republicans. The cheering's over for votes to cut spending; next come votes that will cut spending. As various benefits come under the blade, various parts of the public will go wobbly, and some may take more of a fancy to Dr. Clinton and his offer of a budget balanced with nothing down and a decade to pay - the EZ-Way. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. by CNB