THE ENERGIZER BUNNY OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING

When the federal government takes a rare break from raising taxes, no one in America should breathe easy and let down the guard on their pocketbook. Congress and regulatory agencies can affect your personal bottom line without demanding more money into the federal treasury. The name for this fiscal trick is "unfunded federal mandates," and local governments and taxpayers are properly becoming fed up with this maneuver.

You will find no category called "unfunded federal mandate" on your employee withholding stub, but you are surely paying it. Defined, an unfunded mandate is a program or policies prescribed by the federal government without any accompanying funding. That's the general meaning. Specifically, they carry rather high-minded names: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Endangered Species Act ... who can be against these things? That is, more or less, the point. Congress sets in motion well-intentioned measures, demands that cities and counties implement their wishes, but is nowhere to be found when the bills come due. It is left to county commissioners and town aldermen -- and subsequently their constituents -- to pick up the tab.

This is not an insignificant amount of money. By one congressional accounting, these passed-along costs total $430 billion annually. According to the National Association of Counties, there are 174 federal mandates that place expensive demands on state and local governments. That organization, a lobbying group that watches over the interests of county governments, claims that at least 132 new unfunded federal mandates were introduced in Congress during 1993. The Missouri arm of this association portrayed this dilemma on the cover of its periodical as akin to the Energizer bunny; the mandates keep going, and going, and ....

This is understood at the state level. In his State of the State Address, Gov. Mel Carnahan said, "Sometimes we don't get to choose our own agenda," pointing to the Clean Air Act sanctions Missouri faces because emission levels in St. Louis don't meet federally assigned standards. This is understood too at the municipal level. The city of Cape Girardeau regularly finds itself at the latest whim of the Environmental Protection Agency, whose antenna in tuned to matters of water quality and solid waste disposal, but seldom to the cost of its guidelines. This is understood -- though evidence says in rhetoric only -- at the White House. President Clinton, a former governor, knows and expounds on the burdens placed on state governments by congressional caprice, though little he has proposed indicates a willingness to reverse the trend.

Understand that when we refer to state or municipal governments being hurt by these mandates, we recognize that the citizens within their purviews are actually the ones suffering, either through higher local taxes paid or reduced services.

There is a move afoot to require Congress and executive agencies to show in their directives a "real" price impact on local governments, adding the provision that new requirements coming from Washington are considered voluntary unless the federal government comes up with a way of paying for implementation. Among those signing on to such a proposal are U.S. Sens. John Danforth and Christopher Bond and U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson.

We support this movement, though we acknowledge that getting Washington to change its ways just so councilmen and county supervisors don't have to face tough decisions is something of a pipe dream. Sixty-six percent of every tax dollar paid in this nation goes to the federal government. Even if that figure never changes, the federal government increases its reach over our lives. That Washington does its so quietly is especially galling.