Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 8, 1994                   TAG: 9410110013
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A BLOWN GOP OPPORTUNITY

It wasn't.

The "contract" turned out to dwell in fiscal Never-Never Land, a point soon noted in this space and elsewhere. Less noted has been the sheer magnitude of the silliness.

For the first time since the Truman administration, the federal budget deficit has declined three years in a row. The federal bureaucracy is the smallest it's been since John F. Kennedy was president. Yet balancing the budget by the year 2000 will require hundreds of billions of dollars more in spending cutbacks, revenue increases or both over the next five years.

The Congressional Budget Office puts the number at $700 billion. The anti-deficit Concord Coalition, headed by former Democratic Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts and former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, puts it at $760 billion. The Clinton administration says it's $743 billion.

The GOP contract doesn't recognize the existence of such numbers.

The contract promises, via constitutional amendment, a balanced budget. It also promises tax cuts of $217 billion (based on Republican estimates), especially for wealthy people. It also promises spending increases of unknown amount (hint: the House Republican alternative budget called for $61 billion more than did President Clinton's budget) to "strengthen" the military.

True, it also proposes mostly unspecified spending cuts of $221 billion (again, from Republican estimates). But even assuming these were passed, what about the $700 billion to $800 billion for the existing budget to get balanced?

The gaps in this contract are breathtaking. If Republicans had either (a) proposed specific spending cuts sufficient to balance the budget and compensate for the lost revenues resulting from their smorgasbord of tax cuts, or (b) declared that higher budget deficits and national debt don't matter, that would be one thing. But they do neither, rendering the whole enterprise a cynical fraud.

Indeed, anyone trying to pass this document off as a "contract" in the private sector might find himself behind bars.

The irony is that, just a few weeks earlier, an important commission of Republicans and Democrats had agreed that America faces a constricted future unless leaders begin to address now the burgeoning growth in mandated government spending, including Medicare, Social Security and federal pensions.

The bipartisan report was approved by a 30-1 vote, but the "Contract with America" was conspicuously evasive about the need for any cuts in entitlement programs. On the contrary, among its giveaways is a promise to roll back the higher taxes on upper-income Social Security recipients that Congress passed last year.

The idea of the contract presented House Republican incumbents and challengers with an opportunity infrequent in American politics: a chance to present, as a united party, serious answers to a hard question and to do so without tarnishing the party's bright prospects in November. Sadly, the opportunity was blown.