CLINTON: COME AND GET IT, SPECIAL INTERESTS

Now we know what politicians will do with something Washington calls a "budget surplus." Last month, President Bill Clinton used the annual nationwide television forum that is the State of the Union Address to announce a veritable orgy of new spending initiatives.

Speaking for a Fidel-Castro-like 89 minutes, the president was costing American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per minute.

Taken together, these spending plans amount to what The Wall Street Journal called "a mind-boggling array of politicized initiatives."

For children, there's more money to expand Head Start, renovate schools and recruit more teachers.

For parents, there's a tax deduction of up to $10,000 to help pay college expenses.

For grandparents, there are prescription drug benefits under Medicare.

There are benefits for Americans without health insurance and tax breaks for low-income and middle-class citizens.

The one bitter note the president sounded under all this avalanche of new spending was for a new class of disfavored Americans: smokers. On these unfortunate souls he proposes to lay an additional 25-cent increase in the already heavy federal tax charged on each pack.

You may be certain that each proposal was focus-grouped and poll-tested to place any critics especially congressional Republicans in a bad light while positioning candidate Al Gore as the friend of each favored group. Few if any of these proposals stand much chance of being enacted into law this year by Congress. As the old saw goes: The president proposes, and Congress disposes.

From the president's now familiar approach, it is clear that he doesn't like addressing Americans as citizens. He much prefers that each of us be treated as members of special-interest subgroupings of Americans, the better to have little benefits doled out by him.

The Associated Press news story relating details of the president's budget phrased it aptly: "The budget President Clinton proposed ... is like a 10 1/2-pound box of candy filled with bite-sized goodies for young and old." There you have it: Another key piece of the Clinton legacy.