Hatchet Job

THERE HE goes again.

Just as hopes were beginning to appear that President Reagan might approach his next four years in office with the spirit of moderation so noticeably absent from his first term, out comes the Administration's preliminary budget proposals. Wednesday's announcement of budget targets for the upcoming fiscal year was just another episode in a long series "of hatchet" jobs on social programs that have come to characterize the Reagan tenure in office. Offered in the guise of fiscal sobriety, the President's plans will serve mainly to exacerbate further many of the social inequalities governments are normally charged to erase.

Faced with the prospect of ballooning deficits well into the next decade, the President is trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. His plane call for a $42 billion reduction in the deficit with most of that savings being carved out of already beleaguered programs. Among those services hardest hit are Medicare, which faces a $19 billion cut over the next three years, financial aid for college students, which will be frozen at current levels, and many programs for urban and rural development now likely cancelled altogether.

Anyone who has so much as balanced a checkbook could have told the President that when he cut taxes but dramatically increased military spending he was paying the way for fiscal disaster. Nevertheless, he foolishly clung to the pipedreams of the supply sides who prophesied that cutting taxes would somehow magically increase government revenue. One discredited theory and $200 billion worth of red ink later, it is the less privileged who are paying for the President's foolhardy mistakes.

So it is hard to stomach the Administration's claim that the deficit reduction burden is being shared equally by all segments of society. Slashing medicare, child nutrition and other socially progressive programs while leaving corporate profits untouched does not chime with our nations of equality.

Unfortunately, the antidotes most likely to cure the nation of its deficit ills--a slowdown in military spending and increased taxes--are the the remedies the President is least willing to prescribe. When Administration spokesmen said that in the current budget everyone's ox would get gored, they omitted to mention the sacred cow defense, now tentatively pencilled in for a $42 billion spending increase.

Nor can the President responsibly stand by his pledge to raise taxes only as a last resort. Maybe this year he'll be able to reach his reduction targets by paring welfare programs down to the bone, but what will he shave when nothing's left? Reagan says he wants to reduce the deficit by $85 billion in 1987 and $110 billion in 1988, but gives no indication of where the extra savings is going to come from.

It's now up to Congress to stop the President from trying to solve the nation's problems by multiplying the misery of the underpriveleged. We hope that the country's elected representatives will show vigilance in protecting necessary social programs and will fight for restraint in defense spending. It is high time that those beneficiaries of the Reagan recovery, the wealthy and the profit soaked corporations, make a small sacrifice towards a big problem. Most of all, we hope that, despite four more years of Reagan, Congress can begin to show the nation the way back toward compassionate and responsible government.