Clinton Budget Proves He Can’t Say `No’

People don’t trust Bill Clinton because he tells too many flowery fibs. Barely two weeks ago, he posed as the new Reagan: a tax-cutting, budget-slashing man of the people. But this week, he submitted a budget that would make the most ardent McGovernick blanch.

The document proposes an overall spending increase of 5.3 percent this year and 30.4 percent between now and fiscal year 2000. In the one area the president can control - domestic discretionary spending - Clinton recommends a 7 percent increase over the next 12 months. That’s more than two-and-a-half times the 1994 inflation rate.

That just sets the tone. The administration expects to gobble up $1.54 trillion this year and increase its intake to $1.91 trillion by fiscal year 2000. Amazingly, the chief executive says his proposals would reduce spending by $101 billion.

Only in Washington would a cumulative budget increase of $1.1 trillion count as a cut.

Clinton’s deficit projections blow even more fog. The president gloated this week that “in 1993, we passed the single largest deficit-reduction package in American history, reducing the deficit over five years by $505 billion.” Yet, by his own calculations, the deficit will have fallen only from $203.2 billion to $196.4 billion over five years. His “austerity plan” thus would generate an additional $1 trillion in national debt.

But that’s the rosy scenario. If you do something the president promised to do last year - accept the estimates of the Congressional Budget Office - Clintonism collapses. The CBO predicts the deficit will rise steadily from $207 billion this year to $284 billion in 2000 and $421 billion in 2005.

The budget proves that Bill Clinton is just another boy who can’t say no to a beckoning bureaucrat. Ronald Reagan and George Bush used to fume when surly Democrats declared their budgets “dead on arrival.” But the fella from Hope has skipped the anger and denial phases. He just tossed a corpse on the lawn and walked away.

Clinton’s abdication gives Republicans a chance to promote their revolution without fear of interference from the White House. Democrats effectively have become fiscal Deadheads, lashed to the slogan “Keep on Spendin’.” And while they search for their souls, the GOP gets to stir up a countrywide debate about how to restore a sense of decency and proportion to national government.

Real spending cuts are the key. The conventional wisdom in Washington asserts that Congress will have a tough time balancing debits and credits because commoners will squeal the moment someone tries to touch their benefits. But lawmakers can chop outlays without maiming innocent bystanders. House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, points out that the president wants the government to spend $3.7 trillion more over the next seven years than it did over the previous seven. If lawmakers hold the boom to a mere $2 trillion, the budget falls into balance.

Kasich has learned that Republican budgetcutters have friends beyond the beltway. He has scheduled hearings around the country - in such places as Manville, N.J., and Billings, Mont. Everywhere he goes, people offer unvarnished views about the budget. Kasich has been stunned to hear farmers offer to forego their subsidies, housing agents agree to give back their grants and middle-class earners volunteer to swallow modest Social Security reductions if Republicans behave responsibly. His audiences just want assurances that fat cats will have to pluck their snouts out of the trough and that, at the end of the day, working citizens will wind up with more change in their pockets and more freedom in their lives.

The Clinton budget is so bad that the GOP might feel tempted to make minor cuts in programs - which would enable them to upstage the president - rather than tackling the tougher and more invigorating chore of sending a wrecking ball through dozens of departments, agencies and programs whose existence is not only unjustifiable but immoral.

But before they blow an opportunity to make some history, members of the new majority might want to think about a Columbus, Ohio, farmer named Warren Shively. Shively showed up at one of Kasich’s meetings and complained, “I’ve received as much subsidy on land I didn’t farm as on land I did farm.” He didn’t like the insult of being paid to do nothing. He wanted to grow crops.

Shively, unlike Washington-wise Republicans and Democrats, didn’t dwell on abstractions like the deficit. He chose to emphasize something far more fundamental and important. He wanted his government to start doing what’s right.

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