Budget Crisis Is a Republican Red Herring : *The real issue is cutting government fat, not the programs necessary for growth.

This whole budget balancing business is a crock. Somebody has to say it, now that the president has caved in to congressional Republican grandstanding on this issue.

There was no budget crisis until Newt Gingrich invented one. The president was pursuing a very prudent course of cutting the annual budget deficit without gutting needed programs. The deficit was already being tamed without all of this rhetorical tomfoolery. Under Bill Clinton, the budget deficit has declined from 5% of total national income in 1992 to 2.2% today, which means the U.S. now has one of the lowest deficit-to-national-income ratios among industrialized countries.

Everyone agrees on the desirability of cutting government waste, but the real debate should be over which cuts are sensible. Instead, the Gingrichites have been using the mantra of a balanced budget as a smoke screen for killing social and environmental programs they don’t like. At the same time, they have voted a rise in military spending and they favor a tax cut that also increases the deficit.

For Congress and the president to agree to balance the budget seven years from now doesn’t mean a thing. There is nothing to guarantee that the next Congress won’t go deeper into the red because of war, natural disasters, the failure to seriously deal with health costs or a recession. Planning to deal with adversity in the future is a serious matter, whereas setting a seven-year balanced budget deadline is nothing more than a symbolic gesture to score points with the electorate.

After years of hearing politicians tell them, “You balance your budget, why shouldn’t the federal government do so, too?” the public has bought into this simple but dangerous logic, even though it is untrue that all taxpayers (or businesses) live within their current income or that it would be desirable for them to do so. This economy thrives precisely because so many of us live beyond our means thanks to credit cards, mortgages, auto and home equity loans and other mechanisms that permit us to consume more than we earn.

“I owe, I owe, so it’s off to work I go,” is a bumper sticker that tells more about what motivates us than those prissy strictures to “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” The day we consumer-workers start living within our means, this economy goes into the toilet.

True, it is better to run smaller deficits or even a surplus in good economic times and increase government spending during a recession. That simple Keynesian theory still holds true. But the claim that a deficit, however small, means we are bankrupting our children’s futures is arrant nonsense.

The vast majority of the federal debt is owed to Americans, people like me who have prudently put part of our retirement funds into U.S. Treasury bonds. I plan to live off the repayment of those bonds, which is a good thing for my children since they won’t have to support me. And if I die before I get to spend the loot, the kids will just inherit it, so, no, I don’t feel guilt about robbing them.

The real issue is: What is government money being spent on? If it’s wasteful--like weapons systems that do not add to national security--then yes, we are squandering valuable resources. But cutting educational, environmental and job training programs will only darken the future for today’s young. Obviously, a better educated public would provide a more affluent tax base in the decades ahead when this nation must compete in a more demanding world economy.

It’s hard to blame Clinton for seizing the balanced budget banner and depriving the Republicans of a phony election issue. But it is essential that he continue to veto the penny-wise, pound-foolish nostrums of the radical Republican zealots. The test of the president’s mettle will be whether he holds fast on this country’s long-standing commitment to provide each new generation with the tools necessary to realize its full potential. That means providing student loans, hot lunches, health care, safe housing, excellent public schools, clean air and all of the other essentials for today’s young to mature into productive adults.

Balancing the budget on the backs of the young, which is what most of the cuts proposed by the Gingrich revolution add up to, is a prescription for future fiscal disaster. The president knows this and has articulated it frequently. Unfortunately, he muffled the message in his State of the Union speech. He needs to be reminded that this is no time to falter.

Robert Scheer is a Times contributing editor. He can be reached via e-mail at <76327.1675@compuserve.com>.