CLINTON ENERGIZES RECKLESS GROWTH IN FEDERAL DEBT

"I would present a five-year plan to balance the budget."

-- Bill Clinton on "Larry King Live", June 2, 1992.

The growth of federal spending has accelerated at a breakneck pace so amazing that it helps to step back and gain some historical perspective. Consider that a mere 20 years ago, when President Nixon handed off the oval office to Gerald Ford, annual federal spending for all departments -- including all domestic and defense outlays -- was $370 billion. Or consider that when a great budget cutter named Ronald Reagan took office 14 years ago last month, the same figure for annual federal spending had grown to approximately $800 billion.

This past week, President Bill Clinton laid before a Republican-controlled Congress his proposed Fiscal Year 1996 budget. This president wants to spend $1.6 trillion, thus nearly quintupling Nixon's last budget and roughly doubling Reagan's first one. Even factoring in inflation, the acceleration has been dizzying.

The question occurs: Was the era of 1974-75 a Dark Age for lack of federal spending? Was 1981? Was it then a common sight to see widows and orphans being thrown out into the snow? The question is sufficiently absurd to answer itself. One further wonders: What, besides a gargantuan and meddlesome federal government, have we gotten for all our money?

On the plus side, the much-maligned 1980s saw an American victory in the Cold War and the collapse of communism as an international enterprise. This was a worldwide historical event of inestimable importance. That, and victory in the Gulf War of 1991, is about it for the plus side.

Far too much of federal spending justifies the disgust expressed by columnist Jeffrey Hart, who spoke for millions of Americans: "Liberal government, throwing off all restraints, has become a hog wallow -- the football of special interests: savings & loans, the education lobby, the AIDS lobby, military contractors, artists' lobbies, farmers' lobbies, HUD crooks, the welfare lobbies, the elderly lobbies etc."

And yet we are constantly told by the spending constituencies that even restraining the growth rate -- reducing growth to 3 percent from 5.4 percent would balance the budget in seven years -- is heartless policy. Judging from his proposed budget, it would seem that Clinton has opted for conscientious objector status in the war on the deficit. Lest anyone doubt that he has quit the effort entirely, it should be noted that the Clinton budget makes no real effort to stem the tide of red ink.

The Clinton plan proposes a larger deficit next year than this ($196.7 billion in 1996 versus $192.5 billion in 1995). By the year 2000, the Clinton budget leaves a deficit of $194 billion. After that, the budget deficit will start climbing into the $200 billion to $300 billion range. Over the next five years, the Clinton budget adds nearly $1 trillion to the national debt. Annual interest payments on the debt will rise to $309 billion in the year 2000 from $257 billion in 1996, with interest payments absorbing 16 percent of the budget.

More details could be supplied, but they are almost too depressing. The president seems, on this issue as on so many others, to be tone deaf to the message an aroused populace is sending. That message might be summarized as follows: We are alarmed at the growth of a meddlesome, intrusive and arrogant federal establishment that can't quite deliver the mail on time but wants to micromanage every aspect of our lives. We are ready to abolish departments, lay off bureaucrats, reduce employment by attrition, slow the rate of growth in entitlements, close local federal offices, privatize many services and sell some federal lands, among other economies. In short, we are ready to seek every possible means of cutting a bloated federal establishment down to size.

Clinton prefers handing this ball off to congressional Republicans, so that he can campaign against heartless budget cutters next year. If the GOP runs with it, they are likely to hear plenty of cheering.