NOT MY FEDERAL CHECK, PLEASE!

There are certain "rights" most of us not only take for granted but demand: the right to possess firearms, drive an automobile and receive our proper share of federal checks or entitlements, as they're euphemistically called. Try to take away a citizen's revolver or rifle, his driver's license and his Social Security check upon reaching 65 --and you have a fight on your hands, maybe even a revolution.

Thanks to the National Rifle Association, the right to have as many guns as a South American drug dealer will no doubt remain inviolate. So, too, will the driver's license, with some restrictions on geriatric menaces probably in the wings after a protracted battle.

As for Social Security, just a minute there. You're messing with a system that is probably more sacred than either motherhood or apple pie in the eye of many beholders. 'You can't take away my Social Security, or reduce it, because I paid for it' is the stock response to any suggestion of even a somewhat slower rate of increase.

But, as objectionable as it might seem to many, we're gradually getting there, whether we like it or not. A study released the other day paints the picture rather accurately and extremely gloomily. The simple fact is, we're running out of tax revenue in Washington, and the consequences of this fact will make themselves felt on the vast majority of citizens living today. As for tomorrow's citizens, they will never live in an age in which Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps are considered routine.

The authority for this is no less than a federal commission that has been studying the effects of entitlements on future federal spending, a panel whose vice chairman is the senior U.S. senator from Missouri, John Danforth. The Kerry-Danforth commission is dead certain its predictions are correct, and the rest of us are certain they're chilling. Correct and chilling. Not a happy scenario for the future.

But in less than 15 budget years, the federal government, at the present rate of taxation and the projected rate of spending, will devote all of its revenue on just two items in the federal budget: entitlements and national debt. Obviously, such a priority will have to be amended if we're to maintain a defense system, a monetary system, federal courts and prisons and the hundreds of other programs, from agriculture to public health, that are currently being funded by tax revenue.

What the commission is saying, in effect, is that taxes must either be increased to undreamed-of heights or U.S. checks for Social Security, Medicare and food stamps must be significantly altered. The choice is not a happy one, but those who have given more than a fleeting second to the rapid increase in the national debt in the past decade and a half know fully well that interest costs on this amount are rising far faster than increased federal revenue, and that as a consequence, radical fiscal surgery will be required.

All of this will occur, the study convincingly concludes, no later than the end of the first decade in the next century. That sounds like a long time away, but a child born today won't be out of high school when the time arrives.

The commission's findings hold consequences for far more than entitlement recipients and taxpayers, however. Let's examine the fiscal consequences on state services, those day-to-day programs supplied by states such as Missouri that we not only take for granted but demand from Jefferson City. If the federal government within a decade and a half has no funds other than to finance debt interest payments and existing entitlements, then it will have nothing for the states, and federal grants will simply dry up. The consequences of this are unbelievable on Missouri and its 5.2 million citizens.

In the current budget period, 27.4 percent of the state's total spending comes from Washington. Putting it another way, Jefferson City will receive federal payments in the current budget year, which started July 1, in the amount of $3,134,900,067. (That's $3.1 billion.)

According to my calculator, this is more money than spending for the following departments and programs: higher education, agriculture, natural resources, conservation, insurance, public safety, corrections, economic development highways, the state judicial system, the offices of statewide elected officials, the General Assembly and the public defender program---plus $100,000,000!

In other words, federal grants pay for all of these state agencies and their programs, with $100 million left over. Imagine, if you can, the bedlam that will occur in Missouri if the governor announces in just a little over a decade that the services of all of the above listed agencies are being terminated. No highway construction or repairs, no prisons or parole system, no court system including local circuit courts, no colleges or universities, no state parks, no highway patrol, no legislative or executive services and no leased offices for more than 500 bureaus, divisions and departments.

This might not be the priority for state spending arrived at by future state leaders, but then again, the loss of more than 27 percent of all state revenue would have a debilitating effect on the state and its citizens.

Regardless of the priority, the Kerry-Danforth panel makes it painfully clear that major sacrifices will soon be required or the federal government, and 50 states governments, are in serious danger of closing down the vast majority of services we citizens have long expected as not only essential but our legal right. When Washington no longer has revenue to fund hundreds of services and Jefferson City is forced to reduce its spending by more than one-fourth, citizens will be faced with sacrifices not even dreamed of today. It's scary!

Jack Stapleton is a veteran journalist from Kennett whose column keeps tabs on Jefferson City.