A ‘Sausage’ Budget Down to the Wire : Clinton tries to close the deal tonight

President Clinton is scheduled to press his budget case to the nation in a TV address tonight. The irony is that in beseeching viewers to urge their Washington representatives to vote for his budget, he is really asking his own Democratic Party for support. What that strategy means is that this is a budget that only connoisseurs of the sausage can love. Even so, sausage is sometimes the best deal on the menu. That is the case here.

Clinton’s budget has been chopped here and there to eliminate items distasteful to opponents and has been seasoned with a sprinkling of other compromises to feed waffling supporters. Political realities are forcing the President to deal, cutting the deficit by a bit less than the $500 billion that he had sought over five years.

But what are the alternatives to this budget? Ross Perot, despite his high-profile sniping at Clinton, offers an ambitious plan that, if not sausage, surely is hole-ridden Swiss cheese. As for the Republican alternative, it is a fine campaign document--but not a serious budget.

If Congress rejects the current budget, it will have to authorize a continuing resolution just to keep the government in business while legislators go back to square one and start over. Starting over would drag out the budget process considerably, offering no assurance of a better result but clearly the prospect of more gridlock.

The President’s budget has at least one virtue. Many economists and analysts believe that, absent major disruptions caused by global events, it would help gradually push down the deficit by reducing the increase in federal spending.

However, the budget proposes to do some things that worry us. A broad-based energy tax including home heating oil would have been our preference, instead of an energy levy only on gasoline. The Clinton approach does not take into account the greater distances typically driven in some parts of the country, especially here in the West.

The higher marginal rates for upper-income taxpayers would indeed help offset some of the spending increases; but would taxing the one sector of the economy that is purchasing and investing dampen hopes for a true recovery--and step all over the liquidity of small business people? Not even top Administration experts can answer that for sure.

President Clinton first laid out a deficit-cutting plan when he addressed a joint session of Congress last February. This was a move that the industrialized nations had long been seeking from the United States. In his own zigzagging way, Clinton is trying to deliver a sense of national self-discipline. It’s still his first year as President. He deserves support.