MAYBE SOME TEETH IN BUDGET PACT AFTER ALL

"As President Clinton shapes his 1999 spending plans," began a recent Associated Press story, "he's finding his opportunities for initiatives constrained by last summer's budget-balancing pact. Administration officials pushing child care, school construction and other projects are competing over an unusually small pie."

To this we say, "Good." If this proves true over time, it is the first hard evidence that the much-maligned budget agreement may have enough teeth to actually be made to work. For one thing, the budget agreement limits next year's domestic spending for everything but automatically paid benefits such as Medicare to $261 billion, just $3 billion above this year's level. That is barely more than a 1 percent increase -- an amount sure to upset pork-hungry lawmakers eager to bring projects home in the coming election year.

The agreement wasn't without its flaws. For example, the price demanded by Clinton for agreeing to such stringent caps was a generous increase for the same programs for the current year. This is regrettable, but perhaps it is an inevitable consequence of a government divided by conservative congressional leaders and the Clinton White House.

With Congress and the Clinton White House, you always have to stay on your guard. But if voters keep the pressure on, this budget agreement may just be the first step toward return of fiscal sanity in federal budgeting.