DATE: Tuesday, August 19, 1997              TAG: 9708190026

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN

                                            LENGTH:   80 lines

COURT TEST IS COMING LINE-ITEM VETO: CLINTON'S ``IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE''

``Irrational exuberance'' was Alan Greenspan's explanation of a stock market chasing one high after another. There's a lot of that going around; it accounts for Bill Clinton's spin on that Republican golden oldie, the line-item veto.

As he made first use of the veto, the president implied that he was nailing the lid on the pork barrel. Which is to say that the veto, finally in place, will foil the tribes of influence people who populate Washington, as well as congressmen who slip funds and favors for back-home interests into meritorious appropriations measures.

This is not likely. One remembers all those rounds of loophole-closings that were supposed to send tax lawyers and accountants into the streets, their services no longer needed. The accountants have not decamped. Neither will the purveyors of pork, a staple of politics and a main business of officeholders. Clinton's hyperbole provides cover for his abstention from ideas - such as curbing entitlements - that bear fundamentally on deficit spending but might furrow the public brow.

The line-item veto has always been pretty much of a sideshow. During the deficit-ridden '80s, The Wall Street Journal made a mantra of it: Just give the Gipper the veto and stand back! The Journal urged. The Gipper, being in politics, went right on spending on his constituencies as did the Democrats on theirs.

This is the essence of the budget deal which now gives rise to effusive self-congratulations by the president and Republican leaders in Congress. The big money continues to flow out in the form of entitlement add-ons and tax cuts rather than in smelly pork. The best thing about Clinton's veto is that it provides grounds for another challenge to its constitutionality, an issue thus far avoided (as hypothetical) by the Supreme Court.

When the issue is finally joined, one hopes those strict-constructionist jurists put on the court by Reagan and Bush will scrap the veto. Maybe the balance of powers should be shifted toward the president; surely he will use that power from time to time for the intended purpose of combating waste. It's at least equally probable that the president will give or withhold pork as a means of advancing his agenda. Clearly, there's nothing in the Constitution saying Congress is the final judge of whether it may delegate part of the most fundamental power (of the purse) assigned to it.

The veto is popular with the people: Let them enact it by amending the Constitution. As matters stand, Congress is getting away with another retreat from responsibility while the president, accepting its sword, declares victory for all.

* * * *

The coincidence of a Clinton presidency and an economic boom is something of a nightmare for Republicans. The economy, after all, was supposed to tank as a result of Clinton's first-term tax hikes and his refusal then to cut the capital gains tax in order to stimulate the stock market.

What really happened must be explained away. Since good times can't be denied, the increasing tendency of GOP theologists is to concede the need for giving credit and, then, to give all the credit to Ronald Reagan.

That president, of course, left office with government bigger, taxes higher and family values weaker. But no matter. James K. Glassman, a Washington Post columnist, argues that Americans are now enjoying what ``should be called the Reagan Boom'' which Glassman defines as a 15-year stretch with just one shallow recession.

How so? Glassman points to a survey of business leaders asked to say what triggered the boom. Those who mentioned presidential policies praised Reagan's much more than Clinton's, but 74 percent looked elsewhere. The real thrust of the survey was that the economy does its own figuring, paying more attention to productivity and technology than to politics. The business leaders gave very high marks to the Federal Reserve Board for helping to keep inflation low.

Glassman's insistence on Reaganomics as precursor to all good things recalls more candid observations by David Frum, another conservative, about recent political history.

Following George Bush's defeat, Frum wrote in his book, Dead Right, ``conservatives look(ed) back on the accomplishments of the early Reagan years the way seventh-century Romans must have looked at their aqueducts: to think that we built all this!''

Forward march! Mr. Glassman. Forward!Line-item veto: Congress' ``irrational exuberance'' MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.

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