GOVERNORS GO TO SCHOOL AND LEARN BAD MATH

President Clinton came to St. Louis this week to talk about budgets and tax cuts and entitlement programs. To the president, the debate over these issues boils down to one word: arithmetic.

Unfortunately, federal policymakers long ago demonstrated an aptitude for dubious math, stretching dollars here, ignoring spending caps there and always spending far more than the nation has in its checking account.

So when Clinton dresses up as a fourth-grade arithmetic teacher and talks about addition and subtraction, it's pretty easy for a bunch of governors to see through the disguise.

Governors are the only elected officials responsible for enormous budgets that are usually required, by law, to spend only what the individuals states can raise through taxes and federal handouts. They know from experience that it is possible to match spending and income year in and year out.

Clinton the arithmetic teacher would do better to spend his time holding remedial classes for his own administration. If he wanted to really go to the cutting edge of education, he might even make up some flash cards for representatives and senators in Congress.

Even though the governors manage to oversee budgets with limits, they also are fairly experienced at spending more and more each year. Some have watched the growth of spending while promoting -- sometimes successfully -- tax cuts. This sends a message to taxpayers that it is truly possible to pay for just about anything while making it appear they aren't being robbed.

Here's some math for the governors and the president: In a booming economy, personal income grows at a fairly rapid pace. Token tax cuts may sound good in speeches, but they rarely match the rate of income growth, which means taxpayers write bigger checks and wonder why they didn't benefit from the well-publicized cuts.

And here's some more math: When governors band together to tell Washington they don't want the feds to take back unspent federal dollars, and when those same governors tell Washington they want more entitlement dollars but without the strings, they are adding numbers to an equation that has exponential consequences. That's getting into higher math, and it's apparent that even the biggest education governors flunked algebra.

What most taxpayers would like to have heard from the governors this week is a simple "no thank you" to Washington handouts and the accompanying mandates. Federal spending minus state programs that can be funded at home equals less spending and lower federal taxes. Now there's some pretty darn simple arithmetic.