LETTERS: CLINTON'S BUDGET FACTS

To the editor:

In the last year, the Republican Congress has drastically changed the terms of the debate in Washington. Now the question is how, not whether, to balance the federal budget. One of the latecomers to this debate is President Clinton, who on Jan. 6 finally submitted a seven-year budget based on conservative economic assumptions. Unfortunately, the good news stops there. The latest Clinton plan is riddled with loopholes, gimmicks and more of the Washington-as-usual that landed us in this budget mess.

The House and Senate budget committees took a close look at the president's budget. Here are some of the highlights:

-- 95 percent of the cuts to discretionary spending occur after the year 2000.

-- For every $1.23 that the president cuts taxes, he raises them $1.

-- The plan has no real welfare reform and even fails to impose an effective work requirement on able-bodied childless adults receiving food stamps, retaining the something-for-nothing mentality of the current welfare system.

-- The GOP balanced-budget proposal makes no reductions, despite Democrats' claims to the contrary, in meal reimbursement rates for the school lunch and breakfast programs. The Clinton plan goes after these programs for savings and reduces reimbursements for school lunches and breakfasts.

-- Clinton's plan claims to extend the solvency of Medicare's hospital insurance fund through 2011 -- not with real reforms but through a shell game that shifts $60 billion of spending from one Medicare trust fund to another. Without this gimmick, the president's plan would extend solvency only to 2004 -- two years longer than under current law. The financing required to make this gimmick work would cost American families an additional $1,200 in taxes over seven years.

-- The Clinton plan imposes spending caps and no flexibility on Medicaid, which would force states to make up the difference by cutting other programs or raising taxes. New York, for example, over the next seven year would have to spend an additional $45 billion more under the Clinton plan than under the GOP proposal.

-- The Clinton plan saves $400 million over seven years from veterans by eroding, through inflation, their education benefits under the GI Bill.

America deserves better than these gimmicks, and Americans deserve to know more about the president's budget than the White House is telling us.

REP. JOHN A. BOEHNER, Chairman

House Republican Conference

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C.