COLUMN RIGHT : Someone’s Ox Is Gored, Either Way : If we avoid “unfair” budget cuts, we’re being equally unfair to current and future taxpayers.

Gov. Wilson and President Bush have both proposed their budgets for the coming year. Citing hard times, both include some reductions in funding for certain programs. In time-honored tradition, these threatened cuts are beginning to draw howls of “unfair” from groups threatened with reduced support and their legislative sponsors.

The threatened groups will predictably call hearings designed to show just how unfair the proposed cuts are. If tradition holds here as well, these hearings will not include systematic analyses of the programs in question or anyone representing the interests of the taxpayers who will be asked to foot the bill for restoring or increasing spending in these areas. They will try to marshal support with a heart-tugging parade of the most obviously pitiful, deserving and/or persuasively vocal beneficiaries, none of whom should be forced by those “who care” to “do without.”

We see destitute widows when Social Security is threatened; debt-laden, struggling family farmers when agricultural or water subsidies are under fire; poor, retired tenants when rent control is questioned; unskilled single mothers of several children when various welfare programs or public housing funds are cut; teachers when education funding is scaled back. No matter where we look, we see that it is unfair to cut anything we now fund. And, though seriously incomplete, this fairness argument is correct in at least two ways.

First, if government promises of ongoing support lead people to believe that government funding will continue at current or higher levels, they will rationally adapt their behavior in response to those promises. Once they have done so, it is unfair to cut funding, because people now depend on it.

This is how government programs generate their own continuance. Take Social Security: Once it exists, people change their actions to rely on it, in that they save less privately for their retirement. So, once started, such programs can never be fairly ended or cut. (Of course, a further question is how many of those now-needy people were “created” by the incentives of the program.)

Second, if goods whose value depends on government programs--for instance farm supports, subsidized water or even taxi permits that restrict the number of cabs on the street--have changed hands since a program has begun, the prices paid by the purchasers include a premium to capitalize the expected future value of the program. So even if you thought the original beneficiaries were undeserving, which would justify taking back their subsidies, you cannot do so. The original owners of the farmland or taxi permits have already gotten their gains. Later owners, who have already paid for their future “benefits” through higher prices, would be unfairly burdened by program cuts.

If it is unfair to cut back on any government commitment, is that the end of the story, as implied by those testifying on behalf of “fairness,” and often their own pocketbooks? No. While program cutbacks are unfair to those who depend on their continuance, the alternatives are unfair to someone else. Saying one thing is unfair, when the alternatives are also unfair, does not establish a persuasive case.

One way to continue or expand threatened programs is through higher taxes. But people have adapted their behavior to current tax policies, and may now “need” their continuance just as much as do program beneficiaries (for instance, homeowners who can just make it with their mortgage tax deduction). Further, even if you don’t think taxpayers “need” what they are now allowed to keep, it is still patently unfair to them to suddenly decide to take more of their money in some unanticipated way. This is why many “fairness” proponents go to great lengths to falsely portray those who earn money as not deserving what they earn; it makes it easier to justify taking from them.

Another way to continue such programs is to spend without raising taxes, which just unfairly burdens future taxpayers who are left holding the bag.

It is time we realized that there is no fair way out from “permanent” government programs or government commitments that exceed the funds available. The closest we can come to being fair is to avoid making such overcommitments in the future and to look seriously at which of these programs effectively achieve their intended purpose.