John Danforth is a U.S. senator from Missouri.

Soaking up the red ink in the federal budget means lower spending or more taxes, or a combination of the two. In my view, the responsible way to cut the deficit is by limiting spending, with taxes used only as a last resort and as a small part of the plan.

The Clinton budget is the opposite approach. It does little to control spending. In fact, spending will rise under the plan. On the other side of the ledger, the President's budget is loaded with higher taxes, especially for small businesses. This plan is the definition of tax and spend: very hefty tax hikes in pursuit of higher and higher spending. Such an approach hasn't controlled deficits in the past; it will not do so in the future. But it will weaken the economy. Despite growing public realization that the Clinton plan is mostly higher taxes, and rising levels of concern in Congress, the President is likely to win the final votes on his program.

The debate on this budget shows clearly a fundamental difference between the two political parties. Republicans generally believe we have deficits because spending is too high, not because taxes are too low. The President and many Democrats in Congress believe the opposite, and count on higher taxes to point the way to a balanced budget.

The history of the federal budget strongly supports the idea that high spending is the heart of the problem. In President Carter's last fiscal year budget, for 1980, taxes were $517 billion; expenditures were $591 billion: and the deficit, $74 billion. For fiscal year 1992, taxes were $1.092 trillion, expenditures were $1.382 trillion, and the deficit, nearly $290 billion.

In other words, higher taxes lost the race with higher spending, and the deficit mushroomed. In this period, taxes rose by 111 percent, more than doubling. But spending rose by 134 percent, or $791 billion. If spending had grown by "only" 111 percent, the deficit in 1992 would have been $75 billion, not $290 billion.

The Clinton budget is $249 billion in new taxes, $15 billion in higher user fees, and $83 billion in slower spending growth over five years. To reach the claimed deficit reduction of $500 billion, the Administration counts several items which are, at best, questionable: $44 billion in spending cuts that were approved in 1990 under President Bush; the promise of $70 billion in future cuts in appropriations bills in future Congresses; and $55 billion in lower federal interest payments. Most of the spending cuts aren't scheduled to occur until 1997 and 1998, safely beyond two congressional elections and the 1996 presidential campaign.

Under this plan, the new taxes will be real, substantial, and will occur on schedule. I believe these heavy new taxes will hurt the economy, destroy jobs and increase the deficit. In a weak economy, new taxes will fail to deliver the revenue that is projected. A poor economy also will mean higher spending for social programs.

With respect to spending cuts, I caution strongly against holding your breath until Congress keeps its promises. Many of the "cuts," paltry in any case, are not real. The Administration counts anything that moves as a "spending cut": higher user fees for government services; $4.2 billion to be saved because the government will make student loans more efficiently than private lenders; $55 billion in lower interest costs on federal borrowing; and other items. The true balance of tax hikes and spending cuts in the Clinton budget is at least $2 in tax hikes to $1 in spending cuts.

The most serious flaw in the Administration budget is that it dodges the issue of spending on entitlement programs such as Medicare. Such automatic spending takes up more than one-half of the budget (excluding interest on borrowing.) Entitlements are rising faster than any other area of the budget. Unless we act, entitlements will be 70 percent of spending soon after the year 2000. We will never, ever have effective deficit reduction unless we deal with entitlements. Because the Administration ducks the entitlement issue, its own projections show the deficit setting new records of $400 billion or more in only 10 years. In all likelihood, the actual deficits will be even higher than the Administration's own gloomy forecasts. This isn't a plan for deficit reduction. It is a plan for a new round of tax-and-spend budgeting.

I sponsored an alternative Senate budget to cut spending by $~2.20 for each dollar in higher taxes. This budget avoided the President's BTU tax, the gasoline tax passed by the Senate, and the almost punitive taxes on small businesses in the Senate bill. It controlled the growth of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security.

The Clinton plan barely scraped by in the House. It survived in the Senate by a single vote. Unless it is reformulated, I will oppose it during final debate in the Senate.