Clinton's budget leaves plenty of room for federal dependents to keep suckling.

WASHINGTON - Taxpayers trying to figure out what President Clinton's economic package will cost them deserve to be reminded of one provision that was dropped - a freeze in salaries of federal workers.

Remember the White House hype about how the President was going to set an example of sacrifice with the federal payroll? There would be no pay increase in 1994, and annual cost-of-living increases in 1995, 1996, and 1997 were supposed to be kept a full percentage point below the inflation rate. That would mean COLAs of, say, 2.5% if the government's employment cost index went up 3.5%.

Instead, the budgeteers on Capitol Hill, under a full-court press from federal unions, wrote into law a 1994 pay increase of 2.2% - a modest raise, to be sure, but not the freeze workers were supposed to get. The law limits the COLA increases to half a percentage point below inflation, not a full point.

But there's more.

Federal workers successfully fought to retain "locality pay" for Washington and other big cities. Under this system, salaries will get an extra annual boost under the bogus concept that federal workers need to have their paychecks made equal to those of their private-sector counterparts.

Further, federal workers will continue to qualify for annual step increases if they are not at the top of their grade levels. The increases are based on a performance review, but each year most workers get them as a matter of routine, says a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management.

All of this means that federal workers in Washington, who now get base salaries averaging $45,038, will qualify for two, and possibly three, raises in 1994.

The examples could be multiplied. The point is that the President's deficit reduction plan, like others that have gone before it, turned out to be a lot less than it was cracked up to be. In the final days of wheeling and dealing, noble ideas of the common good were quietly gummed to death by Inside-the-Beltway political expediency.

Sen. Robert Kerrey, D-Neb., was right on target with remarks he made on the Senate floor announcing his decision to cast what turned out to be the decisive vote for Clinton's budget. "The truth, Mr. President, is that in fact the price of this proposal is too low," said Kerrey.

The budget turned out to be deal making as usual rather than shared sacrifice, said Kerrey. "Get back on the high road, Mr. President," he urged.

The symbolic turning point came when the administration agreed to drop the President's $72 billion energy tax and accept the Senate's less far-reaching gas tax increase of 4.3 cents a gallon. With the Republicans screaming about how the energy tax would hit the middle class, the White House scrambled to make up the difference by making the tax rate increases on the rich retroactive to Jan. 1.

Again, Kerrey had it right when he called the tax increases on the rich "political revenge," a Democratic punishment of Republicans who prospered during the Reagan-Bush era.

This much can be said for the President's program: It passed. The Clinton administration proved it can work with Congress on the deficit, sparing financial markets and voters the spectacle of another defeated President and a political system in gridlock.

But with all the rhetoric about deficit reduction, the plan only slows the growth in the the deficit. The House Budget Committee projects there will still be annual deficits in excess of $200 billion over the next five years, which means Clinton will plunk another $1.1 trillion onto the current national debt of $4.37 trillion.

Left largely intact are the entitlement programs, mainly Medicare and Social Security, but also veterans benefits, farm payments, and all the other programs that churn out checks for beneficiaries. This means that Clinton may be back sooner than he would like to face the deficit monster again.

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