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

DATE: TUESDAY, November 15, 1994                   TAG: 9411150089
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`WELFARE' ISN'T THE ONLY HANDOUT

PARTICULARLY for the House of Representatives, won by the Republicans for the first time in 40 years, the elections last week restored a long-suppressed natural rhythm to American politics. If being in the seemingly perpetual majority had given Democrats an unhealthy dose of arrogance, being in the seemingly perpetual minority had given Republicans an unhealthy dose of negativism.

No longer can the Democrats afford arrogance; no longer can mere negativism suffice for the Republicans. If the Newt-Armey new army indeed trims the newfound perks and privileges of majority status - the ones so scathingly attacked when the other guys got them - they will have passed the first test.

But procedural reform is the easy part. On the substantive policy of federal budget deficits, the GOP's "Contract with America" offers no hope of improvement. Given the election returns, closer scrutiny of that document is needed.

The "Contract" did not promise a balanced budget, only a congressional vote on a balanced-budget amendment. There's a big difference. As economist Robert Samuelson noted in a pre-election Newsweek column, promoting a balanced-budget amendment has the political advantage of deferring the pain of actually balancing the budget.

The "Contract" proposed spending cuts sufficient only to offset its proposed tax cuts: a new "pro-family" tax credit of $500 per child and a lower capital-gains tax. Even assuming the proposed spending cuts are realistic (and assuming the GOP's call for a "review" of the defense budget implies no increase in defense spending), they would do nothing to shrink the existing deficit or to buy down the existing debt.

The hard truth, of which politicians of both parties are quite aware, is that most of the entitlement programs driving the climb in federal spending are widely popular, and their recipients are not limited to the poor. About half of all U.S. families receive government transfer payments, with Social Security and Medicare in the lead. Some 30 percent of the richest fifth of American families get federal benefits; some 37 percent of the next richest fifth get them.

But only 4 percent of the nation's families get "welfare" (that is, Aid to Families with Dependent Children); only 9 percent get food stamps. That helps explain why there's so much more political mileage in criticizing welfare than Social Security.

Welfare reform is urgently needed. But to expect welfare reform to balance the budget is to play in the theater of the absurd. For a politician to intimate that it would is for him or her to purvey sham wares.

by CNB