Taking A Scalpel to the Deficit

At a pep rally celebrating his seventh anniversary in the White House last week, Ronald Reagan seemed determined to end his presidency with a flourish. "As they say in show biz," he urged his aides and appointees, "let's bring them to their feet with our closing act." But the State of the Union address that the President prepared to deliver this week was less a stirring aria than a medley of his greatest hits. It includes a ringing anthem to the Reagan revolution: the tax cuts -- including a call for new reduction in the rate on capital gains -- the five-year economic boom, the resurgence of patriotism. Then the President also planned an ode to the Nicaraguan "freedom fighters." And of course there was a section of budget-deficit blues, a put- the-blame-on-Congress thumper ending with that ancient standard: the call for a line-item veto.

While Reagan has been delivering that last hoary number for the better part of a decade, the tune did not originate with him. Ever since Ulysses S. Grant in 1876, Presidents have asked Congress for the power to reject individual appropriations without wiping out an agency's entire budget. Reagan has argued that a line-item veto would allow him to rein in the big spenders on Capitol Hill and bring down the deficit. Says a White House aide: "What we're talking about is changing a pattern of behavior that has existed for a long time."

+ Congress refuses to go along, since the reform would strip power from the Legislative Branch and hand it to the Executive. But recent events have conspired to give the idea some weight. The Oct. 19 stock-market crash shocked Washington into the realization that the U.S. economy will not be able to endure continuing federal deficits of $170 billion or more. Then Government's budget "summiteers," after much agonizing, produced a puny two-year, $76 billion deficit reduction package. Just before Christmas, Congress presented the President with a $603.9 billion spending bill for fiscal year 1988. The 2,100-page law was packed with pork-barrel goodies to please lawmakers' constituents.

In his State of the Union address, Reagan planned to bring up several examples of those excesses, totaling $4.4 billion, culled from an 80-page list compiled by researchers in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Among the candidates: a $300,000 grant for grackle control in the Rio Grande Valley; $240,000 for a study of the damage done to macadamia nuts by rats; $1.4 million for a catfish farm in Stuttgart, Ark.; and -- in a special dig at the legislators -- $500,000 to bring leaders of emerging democracies to the U.S. to study the workings of Congress. Not even Reagan has the chutzpah to mention one particularly large chunk of pork: $25 million for an unnecessary new airport near Fort Worth, the hometown of House Speaker Jim Wright. After all, Wright will be sitting just behind the President.