Balancing The Budget

Washington. -- Any budget from any president is an X-ray of the government, revealing the skeleton beneath the skin, muscle and fat. President Clinton's budget reveals how simple the government's skeleton is.Entitlements and interest on the national debt amount to almost two-thirds of the budget. Interest payments are in no sense optional. They are what entitlements were called until quite recently -- ''uncontrollables.'' As applied to entitlement programs, the term ''uncontrollables'' meant ''things the political class would rather not risk controlling.

Washington.-- Balance the budget. Increase defense spending. Take Social Security, Medicare, veteran's benefits and who knows what else off the table. This is virtual reality. Sooner or later our public officials will walk through the hologram and into a brick wall of real reality.It is analytically possible to balance the budget and cut taxes. Perhaps American voters are so tax-averse that they will support very deep cuts in benefits and services to achieve that nirvana.Common wisdom and more than a decade of results from our Exercise in Hard Choices suggest that balancing the budget will require a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

Washington. -- "Balancing the budget," according to Ronald Reagan, that sage of the homespun one-liner, "is a little like protecting your virtue: You just have to learn to say 'No'."But it seems that being so negative doesn't come naturally to either presidents or national politicians. So, even as Congress wields the budget knife with more vigor than President Bill Clinton dared to suggest, one has to wonder just how successful the latest attempt to cut the deficit will be.A little history: The last time the federal budget was balanced was in 1969.

You don't have to be a Harvard economist to maintain a budget. Most people have one. Some use a simple notebook. Others punch numbers into a home computer. And there are those who keep the figures in their heads.Whatever method used, it's a simple enough process. You look at your paycheck, and it tells you how much is coming in.Then you total your expenses, which tell you how much is going out.You subtract the expenses from the paycheck. If anything remains, you're ahead of the game, and you can buy something, save, invest or whoop it up.If you break even, you've kept the wolf from the door for another week.

As state governments face the bleak, long-term prospect of a sea of red ink, many are turning to cuts in social welfare programs as a way of balancing their budgets -- increasingly under the guise of "reforms" that supposedly help the poor by encouraging them to behave more "responsibly." By that reasoning Maryland soon should have some of the most exemplary poor people in the nation: A study released this week by the Washington-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported that Maryland is one of the seven states that have imposed the harshest budget cuts on the poor.

So, you thought that you could breathe a sigh of relief . . . the General Assembly had adjourned and your pocketbook was safe for anotheryear.Now you learn all is not well, your pocketbook is not safe . . . the General Assembly is reconvening for a special session June 26. The issue to be discussed is how to solve the major budget deficits facing Maryland. What else is new? And why didn't the members act during the regular 90-day session?A one-day special session will cost the taxpayers $8,000 to $10,000.

The frenzied activity in Washington over the federal budget is beginning to take on the ludicrous appearance of all the king's men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But if the events of recent days are any guide, the success of the effort will be no better than that recorded in the famous nursery rhyme: The job just can't be done.The reason: When Congress voted down the budget compromise painstakingly worked out by centrist politicians George Bush and George Mitchell, Tom Foley and Bob Michel, the center collapsed.