Sound and fury
GOP promise to eliminate budget lacks definite plan

The Republican promise to eliminate the federal deficit by 2002 amounts to little more than smoke and mirrors.

A balanced budget may look nice on paper, but without definite proposals for the money-crunching goal, the realities behind cutting a deficit that took 50 years to build make it impossible to eliminate it in seven years.

Congress must realize the consequences of mandating a wipe out of a $4.8 trillion budget deficit. s in past years, the question is how to save the immense amount of capital needed to balance the budget.

The upcoming vote in the Senate on the balanced budget amendment proposes to eliminate the deficit by the early part of the next century. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will take a savings of $1.2 trillion to close the budget shortfall in that time frame.

With pressure from interest and lobbying groups to save government programs from being cut, there are many different factors at the core of this issue. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) commented that Congress could shave the Medicare budget by $146 billion in the next five years.

Yet the reality is that the Republicans are only hinting at the source of deficit-reduction funds. The promise to solve the nation's deficit problem is a noble one, but without details, the initiative becomes bogged down in Capitol Hill red tape. Unfortunately, the interest from the deficit needs to be paid, removing money that could be spent elsewhere.

Even if it were realistic for Congress to put a dent in the budget in the next seven years, the targets Republicans are hinting at pose a serious threat to the stability of many valuable social programs. Budget-cutting priorities will most likely ignore bloated defense spending, opting instead to slash funds to departments such as Social Security and crime prevention.

Time should be taken to reach an agreement as to where the additional savings will come from, and until that time the rush to pass the balanced budget amendment should be signifcantly slowed.