DEMISE OF BTU TAX NO REASON TO RELAX

Let's hear it for the oil lobby-whatever that is. It was the oil lobby, say U.S. President Bill Clinton and Treasury Sec. Lloyd Bentsen, that killed the BTU tax. And everyone knows what sinister power this lobby exerts on political issues.

This is the lobby that in the mid-1980s couldn't prevent passage of a Superfund tax designed to raise twice what federal agencies said they could efficiently spend on hazardous waste cleanup.

This is the lobby that couldn't keep Clean Air Act amendments from imposing fuel requirements far tougher and costlier than what are warranted by the country's remaining air quality problems.

This is the lobby that can't persuade Congress to make the best exploration prospects on federal land available for oil and gas leasing.

This is the lobby whose frustrations have permitted the U.S. regulatory and statutory climate for oil and gas operations to become one of the world's worst.

So when this lobby wins one, cheers are certainly in order.

BROAD TAX OPPOSITION

Alas, Clinton and Bentsen are wrong. The oil lobby didn't defeat the BTU tax. The monolithic oil lobby of populist mythology doesn't exist and couldn't have defeated this tax alone if it did. It happens that a broad spectrum of petroleum companies and trade associations spoke out against the levy. But then so did a broad spectrum of general business and consumer groups.

It wasn't just the oil lobby that considered the BTU tax a bad idea. But if Clinton and Bentsen want to attribute defeat of an idea broadly recognized as bad to that old bogeyman, oil companies and trade groups should go ahead and take a rare bow. Recent Republican political victories seem to indicate that what the President and Treasury secretary trumpet as blame a growing majority of Americans will construe as credit.

The core issue, however, lives on. Federal pickpockets remain at large. They still want money from the private sector. Now they're talking about a levy on gasoline, on all transportation fuels, on all energy.

When will they learn? U.S. taxpayers don't want to entrust the government with a new sluice of cash. That, not the oil lobby, is why the BTU tax died. And that's the message former BTU tax opponents should take to the capital now.

GETTING CONTROL

For now, getting control of the federal budget is more important than balancing it. Simply stabilizing federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product would represent a major fiscal victory. But not even that will happen until lawmakers implement some form of statutory spending discipline within the budgeting process itself.

No one is discussing a line-item veto for the President, or a balanced-budget amendment, or any of a variety of less extreme measures that might hold in check the natural urges of politicians to buy votes with other people's money. Discussions now focus on silly formulas: so many dollars' worth of spending cuts for so many dollars' worth of tax increases. The country has bought that clunker before. The tax part of the proposition is the only one that ever comes about.

So thanks, oil lobby--whoever you are--for killing the BTU tax. But don't take all the credit, and don't relax now. The next goal must be demonstrated fiscal discipline by the federal government. Until that goal is achieved, Congress should not raise taxes by a single cent. The task shouldn't be difficult. Voters have shown that they know who pays whatever tax Congress enacts. And they are more accurate than Clinton and Bentsen have proven to be in assigning blame.