Sunday, February 15, 1998

Surplus marked 'Fragile: Handle with great care'

The safety-conscious voter might want to stay out of the way of the president and Congress so as not to be trampled in the stampede to claim credit for the latest economic good news.

The Congressional Budget Office now believes -- assuming tax receipts remain high -- there will be a budget surplus this year, four years earlier than the balanced budget agreement calls for and one year earlier than President Clinton calls for in his 1999 budget. That surplus would be the first since 1969, and, if followed by a second good year, the first consecutive surpluses since the 1950s.

The 1998 fiscal year ends Sept. 30, barely a month before the elections, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate are up, so the credit-claiming will be shameless and incessant.

In fact, the surplus is due to the good economy, whose robust expansion predates this White House and this Congress, and to the skeleton in the closet of American politics, the tax increase President Bush signed in 1990. But the Democrats won't give a Republican ex-president credit, and Bush's fellow Republicans can't bring themselves to say anything good about a tax hike.

The prospect of a surplus speaks highly for gridlock as a form of governance. For nearly two years, the impasse between President Clinton and the Republican Congress blocked either side from big spending or big tax cut programs. Now the two sides have gotten together. Last year, the Republicans got their tax cut; this year, Clinton has proposed $150 billion in new spending.

The president and Congress will have to show some restraint toward this modest little windfall, if only to insure that the surplus survives long enough for them to claim credit for it.