Hold That Sugar!

MARY POPPINS THOUGHT A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR made the medicine go down. Congress, though, insists on holding the sugar and swallowing a spoonful of deficit- cutting medicine first. The Clinton Administration had wanted the lawmakers to approve by mid-March about $16 billion in immediate additional expenditures in order to stimulate the economy; a month later, they were to vote on a budget resolution outlining Bill Clinton's long-range deficit-cutting program of hefty tax increases and spending cuts. The 64 freshmen Democrats in the House rebelled. The public, they insisted, has turned so strongly in favor of cutting spending that they dared not vote for any increases before casting at least one ballot in favor of later cuts.

So the budget resolution has been rescheduled to come first and the stimulus package to follow; the hope is to pass both before the Easter recess begins April 2. Many legislators may question why any stimulus is needed. Latest figures show national production shot up at an annual rate of 4.8% in the fourth quarter of 1992. The Administration, however, insists that a stimulus package is needed as an insurance policy against a slip back into recession.

Eventually, the deficit-cutting medicine is likely to be bitter enough for the most masochistic tastes. Besides the hefty tax increases already proposed, the President in effect has confirmed that he is likely to call for higher excise taxes on liquor and tobacco as part of his eventual health-care reform program -- and even those "sin taxes" would not come anywhere near offsetting the costs of making health-insurance coverage universal. On a happier, though still controversial, note, Clinton unveiled a program to invest $17 billion of federal money over the next five years in civilian high- tech projects. Much of the cash would be diverted from military applications to development of such efforts as a car running on "clean" fuel and an "information superhighway" linking computers.