WHITE HOUSE WATCH : Ponying Up

Ronald Reagan knew--he just knew-- that when you cut taxes, you raise revenue. The fact that cutting taxes reduced revenue never shook his faith. Year after year, the deficits piled up. But the President reassured himself by telling a little story, according to former budget director David A. Stockman in his 1985 White House memoir, “The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.”

A boy wakes up on Christmas morning. What has Santa brought him? “Look in the barn,” his dad says. But when the boy goes to the barn, all he finds is a gigantic pile of manure. But is his faith in Santa shaken? Not this boy: “There’s just got to be a pony in there somewhere,” he says.

This year, having been through 11 Christmases and still no pony, the boy quietly came in from the barn. The 1992 federal deficit is expected to be $399 billion, but the White House didn’t promise, this year, that the budget would be balanced in some future year. In fact, the White House foresees annual deficits of at least $200 billion through 1997. Michael J. Boskin, President Bush’s chief economic adviser, told reporters that President Bush “wants to tell it like it is.” There is no pony.

Was there ever a pony? We don’t think so, but we remember what happened to Walter Mondale when he tried to direct the national attention from the pony to the manure. In 1984, no one wanted to hear about manure.

1992 may be different. We are heartened by the new candor from the White House. America may not yet want to talk about the manure, but at least we are no longer looking for the pony.