SURPLUS IS SPENT BEFORE IT OCCURS

An emergency farm relief package is complicating congressional efforts to stay within the two-year-old budget caps lawmakers have been working under. The Senate approved a Republican-sponsored $7.4 billion farm-relief measure two weeks ago by a vote of 89-8. This came after lawmakers rejected a Democratic package that would have spent $11 billion. There is enormous pressure to spend more money. Says Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.: "The tendency and pressures are to go the other way."

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, used strong language, calling the Senate-passed measure "the atomic bomb that blows up the whole strategy" for a balanced budget.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting a $14 billion budget surplus next year, not counting Social Security's surplus. Republicans say they plan to use that money to pay for their tax cut and spending bills for the next fiscal year, but their spending plans have already dipped into the anticipated surplus well beyond that figure.

Lott is hoping for a larger-than-projected surplus to ease the problem, as has been the case for the last three years. This is less a strategy than a hope. We can all hope for honesty and straight shooting when it comes to budgeting, but this episode illustrates just how overwhelming are the pressures to spend other people's tax money.