Fuss budgeting

Everyone seems to think the Reagan budget is in trouble and it isn't going to be balanced in the foreseeable future. Possibly the reason people think this is that we are still in a recession, the rate of unemployment continues to rise, and the deficit of the present fiscal year gets bigger every day.

Well, that's one way of looking at it.

Fortunately the administration is not being confused by facts and is continuing to talk. The thing they talk about is reducing federal spending. If we can reduce federal spending enough, the budget will balance.

Some people worry about this. They take the obstructive attitude that there isn't much more that can be cut. The President is committed to the 10 percent tax cut, and if any more revenue is needed it will be acquired by paying less taxes, not more.

Since almost everything the government spends money on has been cut except the military and social security, it seems to boil down to which one of these will get the ax. It could be the military. As we have pointed out, we could make our missiles out of cheaper stuff. After all, they don't have to made of first quality, expensive material. They are made only to get obsolete, or to blow up.

If the cuts are to be made in social security, there is a simple and sensible answer. Draft everyone on social security into the military. This would mean an enormous reduction in administrative costs. By an act of Congress, social security could be made a special, elite branch of the army, like the SS. It would more than fill army quotas. It would keep retirees active, even if it was only playing golf with the generals.

Those who didn't want to have a home in the Pentagon could live off base with their families under a special category. And it might put an end to all this easy talk; like they say, if old men fought wars there wouldn't be any.