Budget Crisis Won’t Take Any Holidays : Season’s goodwill unlikely to lull angry taxpayers

Today is day 12 of the second partial government shutdown in the federal budget crisis. The closure is the longest in our history, and no end is in sight. Yet the president and congressional leaders say they will not meet until Friday. That cavalier attitude toward solving the budget impasse is partisan bullheadedness, and it’s costing the nation millions of dollars. How can Americans take Washington seriously when elected officials act so irresponsibly?

The first shutdown, in November, lasted six days and cost $800 million-- half for wages for furloughed workers and half in revenues lost by the IRS. The costs will be at least twice as severe this time around. Perhaps the politicians think the Christmas and New Year’s holidays will somehow ameliorate the toll. They’re wrong.

NO DEAL, NO PAY: Meanwhile, Congress seems unlikely to consider a bill to restore the government to full operations until after the new year begins. Again we say: The president and members of Congress should not be paid until they deliver a budget.

White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta is scheduled to resume talks with House and Senate budget committee chairmen today or Thursday. But President Clinton is not slated to meet with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) until Friday. When the politicians left Washington for a holiday break, it appeared they might be moving away from harsh rhetoric and accusations. Perhaps they thought that might help this embarrassing, rawly political crisis fade from the taxpayers’ thoughts during the holiday period.

You can’t fool the public about something like this. The budget dispute is mainly a philosophical spat; the Repub-licans want less government, the Democrats want more. Ironically, Republicans and the president are now embracing the same goal, a balanced budget by the year 2002. That requires less government spending, a development that has already begun, though barely visible behind the smoke and fire of politics. Times staff writer Janet Hook reports that Clinton has signed seven appropriations bills that go a long way toward the GOP goal of reduc-ing spending on programs for energy, water, transportation and housing.

NUMBERS NONSENSE: Another protracted argument in the budget disagreement is the issue of which economic projections are to be used as a basis for a seven-year plan to balance the budget. But this is nonsensical, a stalling device. How can you argue over the state of the economy seven years hence considering the uncertainties of forecasting? Clinton agreed to embrace the GOP-favored Congressional Budget Office data in a bid to resolve the first budget standoff, but now he appears to be backing off.

Is this any way to run a government? The budget conflict may have started over principle but it has quickly become a Beltway circus. The only word to describe the taxpayers’ attitude about these shenanigans is “disgusted.”