Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 7, 1993 TAG: 9301070120
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
CLINTON SOFTENING DEFICIT VOW
Responding quickly to new projections from President Bush of larger deficits, President-elect Bill Clinton appeared on Wednesday to back off his campaign pledge to halve the federal budget deficit in four years.Clinton said Bush had camouflaged the deficit's magnitude.
In Little Rock, Ark., Clinton said the new deficit figures, issued Wednesday as part of Bush's final budget, were an "unsettling revelation." In last year's campaign, though, Clinton was repeatedly told by his own advisers that the deficit would be larger than acknowledged by Bush or assumed by Clinton in his campaign manifesto.
Clinton and his aides seemed to be using the new deficit estimates to begin revising Clinton's campaign promises, and to lay the political groundwork for unpopular measures to cut the growth of government spending.
Bush's budget for fiscal 1994, which begins Oct. 1, shows federal spending of $1.5 trillion, representing nearly one-fourth of the nation's total output of goods and services. It shows a deficit of $292.4 billion in 1994, rising to $319.8 billion in 1998.
In his last report to Congress, in July, Bush said the budget deficit would decline to $274.2 billion in 1994 and to $273.4 billion in 1998. The new estimate of the 1998 deficit is $46 billion higher than the estimate made by the White House five months ago. The actual deficit for fiscal 1992, which ended three months ago, was $290.2 billion, a record.
The projected deficits for 1995 and beyond are based on the assumption that spending for a wide range of domestic programs will be frozen in the next five years, with no allowance for inflation.
Unpublished estimates by the Office of Management and Budget show that if these programs are allowed to grow with inflation, there will be much larger deficits, around $400 billion in 1997 and 1998.
Clinton aides said he still wanted to halve the deficit, but it would probably take more than four years. "It would be imprudent to go too far on deficit reduction so you put the economy in a tailspin," said a member of Clinton's transition team.