You know the country must be in reasonably decent shape when President Bush and the Democrats are arguing over who is to blame for the second-largest budget surplus in U.S. history.

Bush is even cutting his vacation short by a couple of days to rush back to Washington to blast the Democrats for the nation's being only $158 billion in the black this year. The Democratic National Committee says that this sign of solvency is the result of gross fiscal irresponsibility on Bush and the Republicans' part.

The problem is that the budget surplus will not be the $281 billion that was predicted when Bush took office. The forecast was suspect and the $123 billion shortfall was never-never money. (If you had bought that dot-com stock at the issue price, which you didn't, and if you had sold it at the absolute top of the market, which you didn't, the huge profit you don't have is never-never money.)

Somebody has to take the blame.

The Democrats say it belongs to Bush for his ill-considered $1.3 trillion tax cut, now going out in a flurry of $300 and $600 IRS checks so that taxpayers can invest in plant, equipment, expanded market share and new hires to get the economy moving. (Bush says the tax rebates are a badly needed fiscal stimulus, but he says he's giving his and Laura's $600 to charity.) The tax cut will take care of the surplus, all right, but not this year.

Bush says the lower surplus is due to "an economic slowdown that began last year." That's code for: It's Bill Clinton's fault. Unfortunately for Bush, that explanation, while partially true, won't work.

President Clinton took the credit for an economic recovery that began in the last 22 months of the administration of President Bush I — and for the benefits of the tax increase that helped cost Bush I his job. And it looks like Clinton might make out again. Such are the workings of politics: Bush II will take the blame for any economic bad times that began at the end of the Clinton administration. That's another political lesson for the new president: The voters are ingrates with short memories.

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Here's where the surplus gets fun. The $158 billion surplus consists of a $157 billion surplus from Social Security and $1 billion from general revenues. That means if Congress spends any money at all in September — and, of course, it will — we will be "dipping into," "tapping," "raiding" or "looting" — take your choice — Social Security to run the government.

At the last minute, the Bush administration only barely managed to avoid that appearance of impropriety with an accounting gimmick, juggling $4.3 billion out of Social Security and into the general government account. In point of fact, we're already into the Social Security money and — you know what? — it doesn't mean much of anything.

The funny thing is that until four or five years ago, we had lawmakers who never thought they'd see a budget surplus. Until a modest sortie into the black in 1998, the country had not run a surplus since 1960 — with one exception. In 1968, President Johnson combined Social Security revenues with general revenues in a "unified budget." The result was a budget that in 1969 showed a misleading $3.2 billion surplus while concealing the real cost of the Vietnam War. By 1970, we were back in the red.

Anybody want to trade the summer of 1991 for the summer of 1968? Thought not. Please resume your vacations or back-to-school planning.

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