The Budget Gimmick's Return

Congress deals a blow to 'honest budgeting.'

SENATE BUDGET Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and House Budget Committee Chairman John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) were spooked by a Congressional Budget Office analysis of President Obama's $3.6 trillion proposal that found the government would run a deficit of $9.3 trillion (or $2.3 trillion more than estimated by the White House) over the next decade. They are right to be spooked, and their instincts to try to pare back those looming deficits are correct. But their responses have been to resort to the gimmickry that Mr. Obama sought to get away from. While it makes their budgets look better on paper, it does nothing to improve a dangerous fiscal picture.

Mr. Obama's budget endeavored to be more honest. His was a 10-year financial plan. Like President George W. Bush, Mr. Conrad and Mr. Spratt look ahead only five years, which allows a lot of the red ink to be concealed. Mr. Obama put aside $250 billion for more funding for fiscal stabilization. Mr. Conrad and Mr. Spratt strip that, though they have no reason to believe it won't be needed. Mr. Conrad eliminated the contingency fund for natural disasters, and Mr. Spratt cut it in half. Mr. Obama acknowledged the cost of providing relief from the alternative minimum tax, while Mr. Conrad opts to pretend that the Treasury will actually get this revenue, squeezed from middle-class taxpayers, in the final two years of his budget plan, though he knows Congress won't allow that to happen.

There's no mystery as to the motivation for this dishonesty. Like Mr. Obama, the Democrats in Congress want to spend more on education, energy and other popular programs. Like Mr. Obama, they don't want to level with voters about the need to pay for such programs through increased taxes. According to the CBO, Mr. Obama's budget plan would have the government spending more than 23 percent of gross domestic product throughout the second half of this decade while collecting less than 19 percent in revenue. Rather than fix this problem, Mr. Conrad in his budget proposal closes his eyes and wishes it away.

In the last Congress, Mr. Conrad and Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the ranking Republican member of the budget committee, introduced legislation to convene a Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action. Northern Virginia Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R) is also an active supporter of such a measure. The 16-member panel would look at the government's revenue and spending with an eye to making recommendations to improve the nation's long-term fiscal balance. Congress would have to vote yes or no on the commission's package. Adopting the proposal would basically be a congressional acknowledgment of failure -- of an inability to make tough political choices. But Mr. Conrad is right to reintroduce the bill in this session; his own budget proposal offers evidence of the need.