Hunting the Budget Snipe

It's easy to find the fat in the federal budget. What's hard is getting rid of it.

PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama proudly introduced his new budget director, Peter R. Orszag, with what he meant as a supreme compliment: "Peter doesn't need a map to tell him where the bodies are buried in the federal budget." It takes nothing away from the exceedingly capable Mr. Orszag, or the rest of Mr. Obama's exceedingly capable economic team, to say that this isn't much of a trick. Politicians across the political spectrum are involved on an endless snipe hunt for waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget. The point isn't that the waste, etc., doesn't exist. It does. The trick to this hunt is not in spotting the prey but in eradicating it. One politician's waste is another's worthy investment; every program has a constituency. Yet there are billions of dollars in cuts to be made if politicians could summon the political will to do so over the inevitable objections of entrenched interests.

Even more, as Mr. Obama surely understands, it's not simply a matter of ferreting out "what works and what doesn't, what is worthy of our precious tax dollars and what is not." Cutting the porkiest, least functional items would be a good start but would make only a small dent in the federal budget. The real task is making difficult choices among worthy, competing programs. And the most daunting fiscal challenge, putting brakes on entitlement spending, will require paring back unaffordable promises about retirement benefits and medical care. Getting a handle on rising health-care costs is necessary -- and Mr. Obama's choice of Mr. Orszag signals his understanding of that important fact -- but it is not, unfortunately, sufficient.

In fact, there is the kind of map that Mr. Obama mentioned. The Congressional Budget Office, which Mr. Orszag headed until he was tapped by the president-elect, puts out a volume mildly entitled "Budget Options" that sets out some of these potential cuts and tradeoffs. The latest presented a few hundred such options, ranging from cutting specific defense programs to curbing crop subsidies to raising the Social Security retirement age and imposing a carbon tax. Any takers?

In other words, as Office of Management and Budget director, even Lt. Columbo -- indeed, Inspector Clouseau -- could find the bodies. It will take an exceedingly skillful and resolute president to dispose of them.