FEDERAL BUDGET MESS SHOULD GET VOTER NOTICE

If you want plenty of good reasons to live in the United States, they're easy enough to come up with them. One reason that won't surface is the nation's fiscal responsibility. If America were a corporation and viewed from a one-dimensional business perspective, its value would be low and its stockholders would be furious.

Much has been made in this grouchy-citizen election year about the federal government being "them" and the American public being "us": it's an "us" versus "them" confrontation as the nation shows its disgust with conduct in Washington. Analytically, however, we know that those in our nation's capital are own extension to the government's workings, and the "us" and "them" dilemma makes little difference because "we," effectively, are all failing to get America's budget in shape.

A bit of arithmetic serves to demonstrate how large the collective mess is. The federal budget deficit this year is expected to be $400 billion, a record. If Americans are investors in their nation, each man, woman and child (of the 248 million logged in the 1990 census) would have to pay out $1,613 (in addition to their current taxes) just to balance the federal ledger this year.

Keep in mind also that the federal government has produced a balanced budget only one year out of the last 25, helping create a gross federal debt (man, is it ever gross!) of about $4 trillion. (The yearly interest payment required to settle this debt is $315 billion, soon to be the largest expenditure in the federal budget for the first time in history.) If American citizens were called upon to evenly share this debt, every individual in the nation would have to pay $16,130 just to get things even.

It has taken some time for the folks in Washington to get the nation's budget in such a fix. And, it will take a considerable amount of time to resolve the problems created by this mismanagement (unless every American is now reaching for a checkbook to pay the amounts listed above). Just acknowledging these mathematical facts should give voters extra incentive this fall to support candidates for national office who view seriously the notion of reining in the federal budget. And, with that in mind, voters should also search out those candidates who want to keep the budget in line through a constitutional mandate.