`BALANCED' BUDGET: BIG GOVERNMENT RUSE

President Bill Clinton has proposed a fiscal year 1999 budget in which he is looking to spend an astounding $1.73 trillion. With great fanfare, the president announced that his would be the first balanced budget in 30 years. One cheer.

A moment's reflection on the notion of a budget "balanced" at such astronomical spending levels will give pause to those who have, over the last generation, made balancing the federal budget such a singular, even obsessive fixation. For perspective, consider that when Ronald Reagan became president 17 years ago last month, the federal government was spending approximately $600 billion, against receipts of about $540 billion, for a deficit of about $60 billion. Which is to be preferred -- a deficit of $60 billion at one-third the spending levels, or an even more bloated government featuring a "balanced" budget at three times the spending? The answer isn't immediately apparent. An obsessive concern with the accounting fiction of "balance" can obscure the fact that this "balance" is cover, not just for a gigantic government, but for all kinds of new spending, as well.

The president is proposing $100 billion in new spending on highly questionable domestic programs. This is the president who is proposing a huge new expansion of Medicare -- the very program that everyone knows is headed for the fiscal rocks in a few years. If, in this budget, there is a tax-consuming Democratic constituency that went unrewarded -- teachers and other government worker unions first among them -- we couldn't find it. This is the old liberal game of expanding government to buy votes, practiced by New Democrat Bill Clinton as brilliantly as ever. Thus does budget "balance" become the liberals' favorite ruse for Big Government, and for growing it larger than ever.

All this presents congressional Republicans with a difficult challenge. This group needs to find its voice in making the moral and economic case for tax cuts. The federal government is today taking over 20 percent of every dollar produced by the fantastically productive American economy, a level previously unknown except in wartime. Faced with such an appalling situation, if Republicans can't make the case for real tax cuts for all Americans, then voters will be looking for leaders who will.