Washington -- Deficit hawks, those tight-fisted scolds who thought this year offered the best chance they'd ever seen for bringing the federal budget into balance, are starting to lose hope.
The Republican-led drive to cut spending dramatically in order to wipe out the deficit by 2002 suffered a big setback last week when President Clinton signaled through his 1996 budget proposal that the GOP is on its own.
Not surprisingly, the president, who made major progress on the deficit during his first two years in office, only to be pounded by the Republicans and repudiated by the voters in the mid-term elections, decided to let the new congressional majority absorb this round of budget-cutting pain.
Mr. Clinton is gambling -- with the odds apparently in his favor -- that deficit reduction is a loser as a political issue.
Although the unchecked growth of automatic spending programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, federal pensions and Social Security -- combined with interest on the $5.2 trillion debt -- threatens to consume the entire federal budget within 15 years, that's too far off for many people to think of it as a real danger today.
Yet any whisper of a plan to curb the growth of popular spending programs, especially those for the elderly, unleashes a screech of protest from well-organized lobbies.
"There's no real on-the-ground incentive to do those things you need to do to eliminate the deficit," said Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who has made a crusade out of trying to harness the so-called entitlement programs.
"It's all theoretical, it's all abstract. On the street [when the cutting gets concrete] it's: 'Don't cut my programs.' "
Mr. Clinton tried to tackle the Medicaid and Medicare problem last year through health care reform -- and was practically run out of the country on a rail. In this year's budget, he didn't even try.
"He punted," Rep. Charles W. Stenholm, a conservative Texas ** Democrat who has led his party in spending cuts, said of the president. "I'm disappointed, I think he's wrong, but I understand why he did it. Now it's up to the Republicans to catch the ball and run with it, or fumble."
The once-optimistic Mr. Stenholm estimates that the GOP odds of success have dropped from 80-20 to 50-50.
Even on the Republican side, hopes for shrinking the federal government and bringing its spending under control -- which were so high in the wake of last November's elections -- are beginning to fade.
Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio, the hard-charging chairman of the House Budget Committee, was unable to meet his own timetable for a first round of $200 billion worth of cuts by the end of January. He's gotten bogged down in procedural and turf battles.
The congressman is more worried about what lies ahead when the prospective cuts become public.
"We have to be willing to fight the lobbyists, the special interests, people who will make enough noise to try to convince us that the American people don't want this job done," Mr. Kasich told his committee last week. "If the people who get up and go to work every day don't weigh in to this debate, we'll lose."
Already, a relatively modest proposal to adjust the Consumer Price Index to reduce what Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan M. Greenspan believes are too-generous annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security and other benefit programs is being treated like a hot potato.
"I don't think I'm prepared at this point to force a change in the CPI in the magnitude that Alan Greenspan suggested," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who was initially intrigued with the suggestion, which could raise from $75 billion to $150 billion over five years. "We need a little more consensus."
The new Republican majority includes a strident band of anti-tax, anti-government freshmen who say they are willing to take on some sacred cows.
Eliminating the deficit and paying off the debt is ultimately a matter of limiting benefits to middle-aged and elderly people today to prevent massive debt in the future.
"I think people understand we have to do this for our children and our grandchildren," said Rep. Barbara Cubin, a Republican freshman from Wyoming.
But the GOP is caught in a tangle of its own making.
Between their "Contract with America" and declarations by GOP leaders, the Republicans have promised $200 billion worth of tax cuts and increased defense spending while balancing the budget and leaving the Social Security program untouched.
"I don't think that's possible without cuts in discretionary spending deeper than even you could countenance," Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin told Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee last week.
Veteran lawmakers are very sensitive to polls showing that while the American people strongly support a balanced budget amendment -- such as the measure that Republicans romped through the House and are now trying to squeeze past the Senate -- they are not willing to accept the consequences.
According to a New York Times survey in December, 81 percent of respondents backed the constitutional amendment in the abstract. But support fell to 27 percent if the amendment would require cuts in Medicare, as the Republicans are planning, and to just 22 percent if balancing the budget would means cuts in federal aid to education, which the Republicans have also targeted.
Mr. Clinton made it a point in announcing his budget proposal to say he was protecting both Medicare and education.
"He's handed the budget knife to the Republicans, but they may want to turn it on themselves," said Kevin Phillips, a Republican political consultant who also believes the new GOP leaders have promised much more than they can possibly deliver. "They're betting that the majority of voters are as far right as they are. That's a big gamble."
Mr. Phillips agreed with the White House that the current deficit of about $200 billion -- or less than 3 percent of the gross domestic product -- is not all that terrible in relative terms.
The deficit measured 4.9 percent of gross domestic product in 1992 and was headed upward when Mr. Clinton took office. TC Although the new president wanted desperately to spend more on domestic programs, he succumbed to pressure from Congress and Mr. Greenspan to support a budget package that cut the deficit by $500 billion over five years. Half came from
spending cuts, half from tax increases.
But the Republicans lambasted Mr. Clinton for the tax increases, and he got no credit for the spending cuts.
"It's just not a hot-button issue," Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, said of the deficit. He considers balancing the budget the most important economic chore facing the country, but he believes Mr. Clinton's stay-the-course budget this year is a reasonable approach.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the most zealous of his budget-cutting band are betting the opposite. They believe they have a unique, historic opportunity to achieve something so important voters will be convinced to look past their own short-term self-interest.
"That's the pre-1994 election mentality," Tony Blankley, a spokesman for Mr. Gingrich, said of making policy on the basis of the decibel level of howls from special interest groups.
Mr. Blankley argued that former House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington state and veteran Rep. Jack Brooks of Texas, two powerful Democrats who ran last year on their ability to deliver federal largess for their constituents, were tossed out partly for that reason.
"I think the mood of America is with us, but the jury is out," said Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer, a Texas Republican. "We'll see what happens when they come back in 1996."
Karen Hosler is a reporter in the Washington Bureau of The Baltimore Sun.