WHEN WILL WE SEE A BALANCED BUDGET

It was in the early morning hours after the Senate had voted 51-50 to support the Clinton budget. The staff members of the Senate Budget Committee remained in the Capitol to clean up the details of the bill and to edit their bosses' floor speeches. As they sat around awaiting the transcript, they mused about the budgets of the future. When would Congress get around to dealing with the entitlements the mandatory, automatic spending programs that account for more than half of the budget?

Entitlements were only nudged in the Clinton budget. It is not only their size that is mind-boggling, but the critical factor is how fast they grow.

On the adjacent chart are the top 12 entitlements programs.

Medicare and Medicaid explode the fastest. In 1991 and 1992, Medicaid alone grew by 31.5 percent, 10 times the inflation rate. Medicare grew by 12.5 percent, four times the inflation rate. Looking at those figures, it's easy to see why Clinton wants some kind of health care system that will control costs.

Social Security is fat for now, but will be drained dry when the baby boomers begin to retire early on next century. Then there is another form of entitlement, those provided by the tax laws which provide for the federal government to for go taxes on a perpetual basis.

Based on 1992 figures, here were the 10 biggest tax entitlements ($320 billion in total).

Rank/Provision (Source: Congressional Quarterly) for 1992:

1. Net exclusion of pension contributions and earnings $54.0 billion.

2. Home mortgage interest deduction $38.8 billion.

3. Employer-paid health benefits exclusion $37.7 billion.

4. Social Security and Railroad Retirement benefits exclusion $25.6 billion.

5. State and local income and personal property tax deduction $23.8 billion.

6. Charitable contribution deduction $12.5 billion.

7. Deferral of capital gains on sale of home $11.5 billion.

8. Real property tax deduction $11.0 billion.

9. Exclusion of capital gains at death $10.5 billion.

10. Exclusion of interest on state and local debt $10.0 billion.

Just as Social Security has an overwhelmingly political constituency making cost-savings alterations in that system impossible, tax entitlements, like the home mortgage deduction or the charitable deduction, are likewise politically untouchable.

The Budget Committee staffers, most in their late 20s and 30s, sat around. When will we see a balanced budget? Only when we constrain the entitlements of all sorts. When will we get around to doing that? Probably never.