By backing away this past week from a proposal to freeze cost of living increases in Social Security, President Clinton has done more than just made it harder to reduce the federal deficit.
He also has breathed new life into the search for simple formulas for curbing spending, such as the balanced budget amendment.The other day, congressional proponents of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget announced they will renew the battle they narrowly lost last year. Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois and Rep. Charles Stenholm of Texas intend to push an amendment requiring a balanced budget by fiscal 1999.
Though the ambition and idealism of this plan are to be applauded, much more is required if Washington is ever to cut its suit to fit the fiscal cloth.
For one thing, legal requirements are still no substitute for willpower. That much should be clear from the repeated failure of Congress to accomplish by budget-balancing laws what some of its members keep seeking to accomplish by constitutional amendment.
For another, there are sharp limits to how much tax increases can be counted on to do the job. Over the past decade, federal revenue has increased an average of $55 billion a year. Yet Congress manages to increase its spending even faster.
For still another, slashing the Pentagon's budget is no cure-all either. Defense spending did indeed rise rapidly in the early 1980's. But since 1985 it has been declining in terms of "real dollars" that take inflation into account. If Washington took back
every penny being spent this year on the military, it still would not fill the $300 billion hole in the budget.
The only real answer, then, is to cut spending in a wide variety of ways. That's precisely what Sen. Hank Brown of Colorado has in mind. The Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph reports that Brown has come up with a list of about $600 billion in potential spending cuts for the next five years. Among them would be the following reductions:
- $184 billion by capping non-Social Security entitlement programs. The cap would limit the growth of such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and farm subsidies to inflation plus the increase in the number of people enrolled.
- $136 billion through a freeze on administrative overhead spending for all non-Postal Service agencies. The freeze would last for two years, and then growth would be held to the rate of inflation for three years.
- $53 billion by eliminating subsidies to all corporations that earn more than $5 million a year, and to individuals who earn more than $120,000.
- $20 billion by implementing a system of uniform billing for health care.
- $9.2 billion by repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires that union-level wages be paid on all federal construction projects.
- $6.9 billion by consolidating the 20 or so federal intelligence agencies into 10 agencies.
- $3.6 billion by modifying laws that require that U.S. merchant ships be given preference when shipping goods from the United States.
- $3.1 billion by deferring the purchase of another aircraft carrier.
With or without a constitutional amendment, there's no shortage of ways to reduce and eventually balance the federal budget. All that's lacking is the grit it takes to put long-term fiscal responsibility ahead of immediate benefits.