Subject: So Who Will Cut Spending?  
Date: Published: 8/17/88 44 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    So Who Will Cut Spending?  
    ----  
    By Tim W. Ferguson

    NEW ORLEANS -- When David Stockman failed in his final
 push to restrain federal spending in 1985, conservatives
 groused that the seeds of setback were sown in the 1984
 campaign.  Ronald Reagan won a landslide at the expense of a
 mandate, they said, by not telling Americans that budget
 choices needed to be made.
    The Republicans are on the verge of another such exercise.
 The sharpest division George Bush's campaign has drawn with
 Michael Dukakis -- over military weaponry -- is one where Mr. 
 Bush wants higher outlays.
 
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    Now the nation seems poised for another budgetary
 breakout.  The bailout of financial institutions that gambled
 and lost with federally insured deposits is likely to be the
 first big hit, $50 billion conservatively.  Catastrophic
 health insurance, added this year to the Medicare monster at
 Mr. Reagan's request, is likely the forerunner of expanded
 state care, even without a Kennedy-Dukakis scheme for true
 socialized medicine.  Employers are looking for a way to
 unload this burden from their expanding backpack of
 responsibilities.  In any case, perhaps a million AIDS
 sufferers are going to need expensive attention by the early
 1990s.
 
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    ---
    Mr. Ferguson is features editor of the Journal's editorial
 page.

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